I used to think that growing up means a slow realisation that your actions have consequences. As a child, I never saw time beyond the next academic year, never knew what to expect, never cared. Being embarrassed in front of the girls in the class was the epitome of shame, the end of the world. However, it was also soon forgotten. As I grew up, became more independent, my actions had larger consequences. In college, you wouldn't think as much before grabbing the keys to the bike and going out. Now, I make sure I call a few people up to say where I am going.
After spending some time thinking about it though, I have found an even bigger difference, which defines being older. It lies on a continuum of a changing perspective where you start off from a self centred childhood, where I genuinely think all the world is for me, grow up to be a cocky teenager, where the world is my oyster and I am at the forefront of this human endeavour for progress to a sudden and crashing realisation that this oyster is crowded with 7 billion other individuals -all in different stages of their life, granted- and that you have to join the long queue.
The feeling that you can draw inspiration from individuals past and present and that by the dint of hard work and ingenuity you can jump this queue persists for quite a long time though. It takes a long time for us to realise what Leo Tolstoy wanted to tell us through war and peace all along, when you zoom out enough, to look upon the society as a whole, we are mere mites, swept along the current of history. That these individuals are few and far between, percentage wise. That they had some or the other remarkable thing, that certainly I do not possess. It is not the curse of mediocrity, it is just that you can be superb, but just be a drop in the ocean. It is not a despair of oh I will never be that way, it is just a realistic judgement of the self.
As this is such a reverse face, such a paradigm shift in world view, it lead to a deep depression which still hasn't left me. It leaves its stamp on whatever I do. I am scared to plan ahead, afraid of the vagaries of time. This fact is borne out even more so in science, where we see every day, the amount of effort, as one professor pointed out to me, put in by hordes of scientists, for one single paragraph in a textbook.
As the world grows ever larger and ever smaller, as I grapple with such paradoxes and an unprecedented change in the landscape of society within my lifetime, this notion of 'living in the moment' suddenly appears magically attractive. I know that everything I do now must have some basis, must be a part of some plan, must lead to some goal in my head. However, the mind bogglingly vast scale of things I had only recently thought to be within my oyster, so to say, makes it difficult to reconcile a few goals. They were never concrete, but they were really attractive, the goals of a teenage me.
Sometimes I think, I think too much. Most times I think, I think not enough. Somehow, some middle path must be found, a way of redefining life as I see it now, living in the moment, yet working towards a realistic goal. Some way must be found to grow up and yet enjoy the fruits of youth.
