On Growing Up And Doing It Right!

The irony of having a twitter handle and blog alias like Choti Mata (means little mother in Hindi. Purists will insist that it means small pox. But Choti Mata has long lost the ability to pay attention to inconvenient opinions) and writing about growing up is not lost on me. But personally, 2016 has been interestingly unsubtle in its constant reminders about the notion of passage of time and the weirdly engaging ways age plays a role in how we perceive life and its absurdities.

When I was young and by young I mean, very early twenties, a moonlit night was supposed to be spent on the hostel roof top, staring at the stars, listening to melancholy mood music, talking about deep philosophical questions and dealing with arbitrary existential crises.

Now, when I am not that young…and by that I mean, really late twenties, a moonlit night, when you are out on a camping trip is spent staring at the sky, spotting constellations and wondering who the hell is Orion and why is he  wearing a skirt?

For the uninitiated, Orion the Hunter is a constellation. It is easy to spot and wears a skirt. A half skirt to be precise. It also offers the kind of conversation starter that may be deemed to be extremely inappropriate in polite settings.

Contrary to the popular opinion, growing up is not about being serious. It is in fact the exact opposite. It is about learning to appreciate the absurdity of life with humor and humility that only maturity can afford. It is about learning to bond over the ridiculous, the inappropriate, the outrageous. It is about knowing that existential crisis is a trap. That life is too short to muse over questions that are unanswerable. That philosophy is important but not more than having fun. That a moonlit night is not an excuse to ponder over the meaning of life or wallow in things that you can’t control. It is merely a night to celebrate the fact that you do in fact have such a night in the first place; an excuse to make rowdy jokes about benign stars and flash torches to signal each other in Morse code that you never really learnt.

It is an excuse to live. To celebrate being alive.

There is a particular kind of pleasure in meeting people who are candidates for quarter and mid life crisis but defy the very idea of it, choosing to use their wise heads to embrace their life instead.

It is an even greater pleasure to be one of those people.

Life is tough. Nobody promised otherwise. But to use maturity as an excuse to stop living is terrible.

Angst is a great emotion. In fiction. In life, it just makes things that are already very hard…much harder.

Leave your angst behind…where it belongs, with your teenage self still staring at the stars from the hostel rooftop.

Keep the child in you alive…but do remember to kill the teenager!