Insanity is in my genes - Episode IV

They say there is a child in all of us. But I don’t get to see it in most of the grown ups.

Children know what true passion is. One should learn the best way to live from them. Have you ever happened to observe children playing? When they want something they would do anything to get that. You would find it really hard to make them understand the constraints or limits in achieving what they want. They simply won’t buy it. They would pursue their wants without even thinking how much time it is taking them, even if they’re tired and haven’t eaten anything since hours, you cannot really convince them to abandon.

They are also very open about expressing their emotions and would tell you in the most direct manner what they want or feel. They would outburst into laughter even on silly things and would breakdown into loud cries, not afraid of being the centre of attention. You would tell them to behave but they don’t seem to understand that behaving is actually a better option than what they do.

We all did this when as kids. But as we grew up, we learnt to keep away our feelings, to hide what we want. We learnt to behave. Because someone told us while we were growing up that we cannot get everything we want…The biggest lie of the world! We actually get all what we want, if we don’t we get something even better than that but impatient being a human we more often don’t wait to see better things coming up our way and end up telling our selves we’re not supposed to get everything we want.

There’s nothing in this world like losing. What we think as losing are only lessons and diverters that lead us to somewhere better than what we thought for ourselves. But we usually quit trying at all because of the fear of losing.

What keeps us from expressing our emotions? Fear of others, what the other person would think about it? We won’t be ourselves just because we’re afraid of the reaction of other people. We would do what they like and won’t do what they don’t like. Why do we give our control in the hands of others?

We were supposed to grow up with time, but we actually get worse than we were in childhood. We lost our natural instincts to be ourselves. Insanity it is, indeed.

Bushra
22:07 hours
Tuesday 31 March 2009

This article was published in The Pakistan Times on Sunday 21 June 2009 (http://www.pakistantimes.net/pt/detail.php?newsId=1723)