The Odyssey of a Child

I'm back in my abode in Cyberjaya, feeling relaxed and far from the busyness of a typical week-day at work. The soft strains of a Haydn sonata in the background makes me feel right at home, transporting me back to my childhood days.

So much of our personality is just born with us. As a kid, I enjoyed playing on my own, trampling through the undergrowth in jungle, being close to nature and its many mysteries. The world was simply a playground to be explored. Even then, I've always felt I was continuing an on-going adventure that is life.

So many of the sights and sounds felt familiar to me. I was a child of the universe, as much as I was the offspring of my parents. When you are young and unburdened by the cares and hard realities of life, you felt like you could conquer the world. Nothing was impossible. You felt confident that even the greatest of mysteries are penetrable.

I read, because that was what I thought everyone did. Reading was to me, a mature activity that adults do. I couldn't wait to be able to stick my nose into thick tomes written in a language that I was still struggling to comprehend. My limited vocabulary did not deter me from poring through every page and sentence from cover to cover. For books were the emblem of adulthood and I couldn't wait to become one.

I did not know why a love of classical music came so naturally to me. It was as if I had known all the great composers--Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin--all along. I was just getting reacquainted with old friends. Their music seemed like a part of nature--emanating from the trees, the leaves, the sky and the stars that decorated the night. And wondrous nights they were, filled with the magic of moonlight, the incessant hum of insects and the serenade of nocturnal birds.

Little did I know then, adulthood was like the expulsion from the Garden. And then all subsequent passages of life, are but attempts to return to that lost Eden of childhood.  But Time, in its all-knowing wisdom, sets us up in unexpected ways, turning our odysseys into rites of regret and reconciliation. We become adults, simply by trying in vain to be children again.

But all we could recover were glimpses of that immortality. Nature made a pact with us, turning us into fathers and mothers of children, as a consolation for lost innocence. Though nothing--as Wordsworth so eloquently put it--can bring back "the hour of splendour in the grass, glory in the flower", we resolve to be strong. Thus we grieve the quiet grief of adults, hiding our despair in the vanity of worldly pursuits. 

And in our quiet moments, echoes of those childhood laughter still ring in the mind, coaxing us on, for they seem to lie ahead and not behind. And so we trudge on, with the faith that had been forged in our hearts, that adulthood is but a brief sojourn, and in the end, we shall all return, to reclaim our glorious Garden, as rightful children, born of heaven.