“Childhood”. The word fills your heart with so much of delight and handful of memories. Everyone surely has a different reason to cherish his/her childhood.
1. Innocence
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man”, said Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore’s words can’t be overlooked. It highlights the innocent, divine and beautiful life a child leads. It clearly rates this phase over all others. Childhood’s greatest advantage is its innocence. A child’s life is prattle, scribble, laugh, play and enjoy. He is innocent. He is unaware. He is pampered. He is protected. Adults lack the innocence of childhood. A child’s greatest virtue is his innocence. It can never be attained again. This makes his life pure and beauteous. Innocence that a child has can be never got back at any stage of life again. The key to all his happiness is his innocence. This makes it the most significant reason to miss one’s childhood.
2. Free of troubles
A child is free of all troubles. He is a responsibility of his parents, and he has no responsibilities of his own. He hardly has anything to care about, dresses, looks, money, living, relationships or house. This is a major reason to miss childhood. The biggest fear of every one’s life is worries, and childhood is totally abstained from them.
3. Memories
What makes every special moment so special? What makes life worthwhile? What makes relations important? Why do we need pictures? To all these questions, is a common answer. Memories. Memories are what makes a life meaningful. A bunch of beautiful childhood memories, a huge photo album containing childhood pictures, can perfectly make your day. Childhood memories are the most beautiful ones, for its innocence, fun, love and carelessness. These memories are ironically the most faded ones. Though, they are unique. Infact they make the most special set of memories for any person’s life.
4. True friends
At workplace or college, we hardly get what we call a true friend. We all aim to excel, after school. We all are competitors. No one really is a well wisher. Though this competition is there even at school, it becomes a competition for life after that time. This is a cut throat world. We all live to survive the best way. Everyone’s first motives become self driven, leading to loss of real friendship. The selfless, carefree, friends forever, at school, can never be gained again in life. Also, the long years one spends at school and home, with a common bunch of friends, makes childhood friends closer than any other. They know each other the most and the understanding and bond one shares with them can very rarely be regained in the latter life.
5. Guided
Children need guidance, because they are children. As a child grows up, he slowly separates from his parents. He has to take his own decisions and decide things for himself all alone. This becomes difficult many times, leading one to wrong decisions. At such stages of life, we really miss being kids. We miss being under the evergreen guidance of our parents and teachers. With age, comes self respect. We can’t afford to depend on others for every little thing. We have our own deal of responsibilities and issues. We have to look after them on our own. These things makes a grown up. We get independent. But at many stages of life, this independence, that we always yearn for as a child, becomes a burden for us. We miss the expert guidance of our parents. We miss the warmth of their support. Though a parent never leaves his child alone, emotionally, with changes in life, all time guidance is lost by a child.
6. Protected
A child is under the shadow of his parents. At school he is protected by hundreds of teachers and staff. This is a big thing. One cannot always go out everywhere with his parents. He can’t depend on them, forever. He can’t always be protected at school. As we grow up we are freer. “With freedom comes great responsibility”. In this world, this freedom has become so much more dangerous. Situations change, a girl has to step out of her house, and she is treated like a public entity. She is molested, she is harassed. Her life is ruined. She is traumatised for life. Though today even children are not free of this. Another example is of the life we lead in hostels. Many thousands of children leave home and go to colleges to off places. And many of them get into troubles, trapped in wrong habits. They end up ruining their life. All this is only a result of the lack of shelter a child gets from his parents, because since he loses protection, and gets freedom, he/she is not always capable of dealing with it successfully, sometimes under the societal circumstances, sometimes under moral and emotion circumstances.
7. Small world
A child’s world is limited. He is confined within the little world of his. Playing, school and a bunch of funny little friends is what he has. He knows fun, love, play, happiness and school. That’s where a child’s world ends. It starts, and it ends. It is less. And “less is always more”. Children live a restricted life, with fewer things to do. What does a child have to do? Get up, go to school, play, study, eat and sleep. End of his world. He has no obligations or responsibilities. He is free to choose what he wants to do, for the limited number of things he has. While, after growing up, our world expands, there are hundred things we have to do every day. Many of them are just obligations, many of them are just responsibilities. We have to do them even if we don’t like them. We have to be concerned for our duties. Thus, everything changes with time, making childhood a stage to be missed the most.
8. Unaware
As we say “ignorance is bliss”. Though the phrase is a negative one, a child’s ignorance to the world can prove that ignorance really is bliss sometimes. A child is unaware of the world. He has negligible worldly concerns. A child’s life is free of all the vices of this world, like, greed, ambition, pride, corruption and wealth. This ignorance that comes to him naturally makes the key to his happiness. It is vices that trap us, and virtues that free us. A child’s strength is his unawareness. A child has no idea that such things exist. This being a major reason for us to miss childhood, for never in life can one get back to that stage, where he won’t be wrapped in all the filthiness of the world. With childhood, passes the unconscious life where there are only smiles and goodness.
9. Closer to family
A child is always close to his family, atleast to his parents/ guardians. This closeness makes his life a lot easier and nice. One can share everything with their parents and doesn’t have to face troubles alone. There are no burdens on a child’s shoulders. He can speak about every problem to his/her parents. This is because a child’s issues are such that they can be shared with parents. But as a child grows up, he feels the lack of understanding, generation gap and difference of opinion. With education and exposure a child builds his own opinions, and they often contradict with his parents. Due to these reasons, a child alienates himself from sharing and opening upto his parents at the latter stages of life. Also, with time, he gets separated from his parents. Studies, job and marriage, are the various reasons why a child, as he grows up has to leave his/her family and move to another place, thus getting geographically separated. A child though, always misses the closeness and warmth he/she had with one’s parents after attaining the age when they have to be independent for all reasons.
10. Subtle
It is famously said, “If you give some time looking at the simple things, they are the most beautiful ones”. Childhood is one of those simple and beautiful things. The reason to miss childhood lies in its subtleness. A child’s life is simple, in not one or two but many ways. He has no troubles, no concerns, no emotional or mental pressure, he is free of all complexities. A child’s undeveloped mental and emotional mind is a big cause for this. The simple lifestyle, grounded aims, unaware heart, unstirred emotions, freedom from social restrictions and tenderness of life makes childhood a thing to be missed always.
No comments:
Post a Comment