By Varun Bhosle

I knew this little kid a while ago, he used to dream about what it would be like to be an adult. He didn’t really want to be a kid. Going to school everyday sounded quite dull in comparison to getting to be a big boy who got to do whatever he wanted. To him, being a grown up had way more pros than cons. No parents, no rules, no restrictions on how much Pokémon he could play, and how could I forget, no vegetables.

I remember him being jealous of the things his older brother got to do but he didn’t. His brother could go out wherever he wanted and he got to hang out with his friends whenever. Not to mention, everyone older than him always seemed to know more about everything. And so he did what any self-respecting 9 year old would do. He tried to grow up. He thought that, if he could live like an adult – then he’d be a little bit closer to actually being one. 

So he started reading books to get ‘smarter’. How about journaling? That seems like a mature thing to do. Why not start learning how to use a camera? What about watching advanced drawing tutorials until he’s just as good as the instructors? And so on and so forth. He kept trying, obsessively hopping between hobbies in the hopes of leveling up a little faster than the rest of the pack. He’d spend hours needlessly trying to get good at whatever he was fixated on at the time. And of course, he eventually started trying to mimic the adults’ behaviour too. Wearing more ‘grown-up’ clothes, like shirts and sweaters instead of graphic tees (very mature, I know), trying to decide what his career should be way too early, watching movies that weren’t PG-13, etc. As fate would have it, the months started feeling shorter, shirts that once read ‘S’ became ‘XL’. And when he expected it the least, the worst thing happened. 

He grew up.

Now he’s mere months from turning 18, from legally being considered an adult. He thought that 18 was too far away to ever be real. There he was messing around with his friends on the internet, finding random strangers to talk to when eventually one of the strangers asked him a question, “How old are you?”, and it wasn’t long before the unfamiliar words cut through the air, “Sev- seventeen. I’m seventeen”

“There’s no way”, he thought to himself. The number hadn’t sunk in up until that moment. “Is this it? Staying up late and feeling terrible about not doing school work? Trying to balance personal time and a social life? Dealing with confusing feelings? Losing loved ones? Is this what it means to be an adult? This isn’t what I asked for. Where did the time go?” 

If you haven’t pieced it together yet, that boy is me. I’m getting older, and just like spider-man said, “Age and responsibility are positively correlated”, did I get that wrong? Anyway, I could go on and on about the liberties that children have for forever but in short: it was a lot of fun being a kid. Some days I wish I could turn back the clock, and go play some Minecraft on my crappy old laptop. Things like motivation didn’t need to exist because I did things anyway and discipline wasn’t necessary because working on a passion project wasn’t difficult or intimidating. Living was a natural state of being, not something I had to be pushed to do.

As ironic as it is, I hope that going ahead I can keep that kid inside me alive, because I won’t really be alive if he isn’t. Kids might be dumb and senseless, but they’re also the most innocent and candid expression of humanity that you’ll ever see. I can’t tell you why I spent hours upon hours pursuing random hobbies, but I can tell you that I did. And those hours made me who I am. 

I think it’s in our best interest to do everything we can to preserve that humanity within ourselves, and encourage it in others. As Elizabeth Ziman of ‘Elizabeth and The Catapults’ said, “In the end, we’re all just taller children”