The Reacquaintance of Childhood

It's raining heavily outside, and here I am in my apartment, hoping to write a few lines to kick off my blog article for the week. The rainy season has arrived, and as always, it is warmly welcomed—it's my favourite time of the year.

The patter of raindrops on the roof and balcony floor lulls me into a nostalgic state of mind, bringing back memories of school holidays. I feel like that these days--a schoolkid waiting for the year-end holidays, having slogged through another drab year of schoolwork. As a kid, you had no worries — holidays meant play and more play; the future was a limitless stretch of possibilities, golden with promise and the unbridled joy that life could offer.

One believed in one's invincibility and that progress is an inevitability, and the world will receive us in its warm embrace; that success and riches are our birthright. That's the innocent optimism of a child, still untouched by the tempests and turns of life. It is a sad fact of life that adulthood often tears away this veil of innocence, only to reveal life in all its harshness.

The tragedy of life is that we dismiss innocence as the inconvenient ignorance of childhood, which had to be, at the first opportune moment, discarded for good. How wrong are we! Little do we know that the divine dwelt in those free and innocent hearts, kindling the creative fire that fuels an entire lifetime of endeavours.

As life tests us with its multitude of tribulations, we hide behind an armour of defensiveness, of deceit and deception. We seek the bright lights in the distance, thinking they are the promised stars of our tender years. We tried to play by the fair but unwritten code of childhood, only to be deceived and denied at every turn, leaving the soul bitter and bruised.

But let's despair not, for the child is not dead, only in deep sleep, collapsed in a slumber of boredom. If we could gently rouse the resting rascal, we might yet catch that undimmed glimmer in its awakened eyes. 

It is thus imperative that they should make acquaintance again, the adult and the child, synthesising worry and wonder into something called wisdom. For youth and age are not sequential stages on the ladder of life, but vital ingredients that bake this cake called life. 

Perhaps it is destined that only in the twilight of life do their paths cross again. The culmination of one's life is but the reacquaintance of childhood. It is the denouement that life presents, before the Great Sleep descends.