The Second Childhood

This is going to be a short writeup.

For a lot of time now, I was worried about one thing: my age. I always wanted to remain a child forever. The carefree-ness, the absence from big responsibilities, the unconditional happiness, the sense of accomplishment in little things … I was always afraid of losing it all. Even though legally an adult from last seven months, I had been trying to deny the fact that I have grown up, and a child no more I was.

Even if I accepted the fact on rare occasions, I felt there was a latent sadness in the acceptance. Losing childhood … argh! It was a tough choice, a tough realization.

But yesterday, a brainwave changed this all. I had a new, revolutionary thought.

Let me establish the background first – that is important.

So it was a rainy weather. All these thoughts about happiness and age were running at the back of my mind. Nevertheless, it was a fun journey going to buy some milk from a nearby store. The street had puddles of water, and you had to navigate your way at every step.

To take a shortcut, you divert from the street and embark on the empty two-sided ground which joins the store (with the gap of a little road). Two or three dogs are usually lying here and there on this ground like some mops.

It was here in this ground I had this brainwave I talk of.

All before that, I had been imagining the graph of happiness as something like this:

Or something resembling this:

Or to be more visual, I will say that the mountain of childhood is the highest among all other mountains – mountain of adulthood and mountain of age etc.

But all of a sudden, I had a new realisation. I revisited my problem: my problem was that I had lost my ability to enjoy life as a child can.

This picture of tall and short mountains perplexed me.

And then came another picture, another viewpoint: what if instead of increased and decreased happiness, it was just “different kinds of happiness”? Maybe a child could be happy and an adult too could be happy, but they both were happy in different fashions? If that was the case, my attempt at pretending to be a child so that I could be happy in the same way a child is happy, will be futile, because happiness made for my age is just a different kind of happiness!

The only difference is that the mountain of childhood is different than the mountain of adulthood. They may have different kinds of grass or trees or environments, but they tower the same.

So even a sick, helpless old man can enjoy life to the fullest, only if he cares to identify what kind of happiness is life ready to offer him!