A baby can do what it wants, eat when it wants, sleep when it wants, cry when it feels like and smile when it really wants to. Age brings patterns of learned behaviour which are passed on to us, do not scowl, smile when you say thanks, keep quiet when you are in company of strangers, be polite at all times, dont be rude and do not ever shout and scream, keep calm when you dont get your own way, stay awake and work during the day even if it means battling waves of sleep as they hit you after lunch.
Are we not trying to unlearn something that we were born knowing? A child knows that to do instinctively, whether its ancient wisdom that comes down the evolution line to us, or it is something the human body knows as part of some gene code. We unlearn what we were born knowing, resting when needed, expressing emotions and doing what would make us 'acceptable' as defined by society.
Little surprise then that a lot of times we spend our energies doing things that we are not really keen to do, staying up late working on those, falling sick with stress and tiredness and then being told to rest and sleep, and while we are ill we are allowed to eat and sleep and do what we fancy, and then we get better. There seems to be some logic to this.
I am not saying one should be allowed to do all that he or she wants at all times, but then I do wonder who defines what is right or wrong? And if we started to define what we think was acceptable or not, would it make us reclusive?
I just feel that a lot about being 'old and mature' is about worrying about things that are not that big and could be ignored, that doing things to please other people plays a large part of our lives. Being old is about doing things without being told, seeing things which are unclear with clarity, predicting problems that might not happen, preventing things, and pretending. Are all adults fake? Is it a surprise then that we value the innocence of little children. Do we have to grow up?
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