While We Were Young

While we were young we were the smile on the face of the earth. We were the sparkle of dawn that each dewdrop held prisoner. In the world, we were the new introductions to the stage upon which people walked about, strangers going their busy ways.

Those days weren’t easier than now, those nights no calmer. There were questions then. Questions about who we are and where we were and where we were going. But back then, questions without answers weren’t disappointing. They were just little puzzles that needed solving. The little stream that trickled past and disappeared we never knew where. We were sure we’d know someday.

We had to be introduced to the value of hard work, to the importance of not telling lies, to the race against time and the scheduling that goes with every activity that went on around us. But it was all fresh, the wonder of this new world, the mystery of being here and now. While we were still young.

We were politely told to be polite. We were politely told to slink out of the way when people walked their different ways. And then, one day, we were introduced to this parent of ours called Growing Up. Growing Up taught us when to laugh, what selective stuff to frown at. We were gently told to behave, because people who were here longer than us could no longer remember innocence. We were told about the mandatory concept of context. Context was a must in conversations. Also, we were told to hold back a yawn when what we heard weren’t the answer to our questions.

Growing Up taught us the different arts. Like the people who were here longer, we asked only the questions that had answers. We were fed reasoning and religion as mild anesthetics to relieve the discomfort of transformation. So we learned to acknowledge a God we would never meet. That was important. Knowing and loving an invisible God. Now we could wake up in the mornings knowing there was nothing new about this sunrise. It would come again tomorrow. The reasoning was that it had come yesterday, the day before and ever. Thank God, sunrise was no mystery anymore!

Then Growing Up taught us to live with the question. Normal life, it said, was all about not chasing the answer. It was about going our ways. Like everyone else. Curiosity died silently. We were free from it. We had grown up, like them.

And since it is necessary to be happy it was necessary to still laugh, or at least smile. The mornings may not be rapturous surprises but they were dependable alarm clocks. They woke us out of dead slumbers. And when that new entrant, emptiness, hits us sometimes we take what we call vacations. We take breaks. We escape, so we can come back fresh and go our ways again. And anyway, some questions are negative so why ask them?

Like the one about nostalgia. Isn’t that emptiness only a little nostalgia that will pass? It is only a sense of loss at time passing, life slipping by. It goes away when you bury the questions once and for all. Sure, stop to smell the roses if you like them, but move on. Don’t leave the herd to keep smelling them. That’s called abnormal. Never revisit old mysteries. That’s negative. It causes regret. At time passing. At being nowhere near some answer that might not exist anyway.

But there’s one thing about growing up. We’ll never stop doing it. Even though it might mean we’ll stop walking before we see the end of this journey.

And sometimes, very rarely, the questions we buried will break the surface and bloom. Like it is doing now, when I write. Their beauty will haunt us again. There’s no burying for good the question why the sun rises every day, and why we’re sure it will again tomorrow.

Very rarely, we’ll stop to ask again why we are here. On our separate ways, we’ll share the beauty of those questions again. And like a forgotten tune, like the sweet smell of certain wild flowers that once grew in the backyards of our minds, we’ll share a pain no anesthetic can kill. No matter how old we grow up to be, there will still be things we’re seeing for the first time.

For you see, we were once young too.