Growing up

The early 20’s phase. Grads/Post-grads who are out into the world basically to either find a job or become the employer (read as entrepreneur). It’s that phase wherein you ought to make stuff happen, the most dynamic phase, perhaps. But then again, there is a slim ratio which gets what they had desired for and a majority settles for something quite not so fancy as a start. Well, we all know the struggles and how to cope with it. I’m here to talk about something which is so ingrained with all this process that it gets overlooked quite often and we call it as a part of growing up.

A quick question, when was the last time you’d a really big circle of friends gathering up for some dinner or picnic? Is the frequency consistent as it was when you were in college? I completely agree that we’re more stressed out with work and our schedules look bleak now. But how many times you’ve been actually enthusiastic about such thing or rather tried to ignore it altogether? Well, that my friend is where the equation changes.

As we grow up we realize that we tend to lose interest in being with larger group of people for a longer time. I remember as a kid, I always wanted to go to my ancestral place where all the relatives and peers and who’s who would be there. More the crowd, more the fun was my logic, as I’m sure everyone’s was. But now I can literally sense the difference. I actually see myself hanging out with a limited group of people on a regular basis. Not that I loathe at a bigger circle. I absolutely cherish it. But only on occasional basis. I can’t see myself accommodating everyone’s madness regularly when there is so much of it in daily life. Perhaps, that’s why we form a niche for certain people and thus prefer tuning in with them rather than a complex assemblage of myriads of people who don’t make the cut. This is where we get choosy and start preferring quality over quantity. As they say:

It’s nothing like we become anti-social but we prefer less drama. Even now if we see a friend or a cousin after a long time, there is not a happier sight than catching up with and talking to that person till the sun rises again. It’s just that we’ve become wiser by now; we’ve experienced almost all sorts of emotions and we’ve all had all sorts of friends and realize that things do really get sour with friends too. So indeed by the virtue of wisdom we gain during all these time we love to have everyone around but not all the time.

But the up side of this is we become open to forging new relations and friends without a count on it unlike childhood times when we were too sceptical to even share an eraser because the other kid wasn’t apparently in our league of best friends. We become a whole lot friendlier because we realize that everyone else is facing a struggle we don’t know of and spreading the love and warmth is of mutual benefit and ultimate pleasure. I happened to make some lovely friends to a concert I’d been recently to and had the best time of my life without having any idea about them. 24 hours without being judgmental and not even knowing if we are ever bound to meet again, just for sake of good times, amazing companionship and creating memories for a lifetime.

So that is how we’ve evolved. We’re all like Ash Ketchum basically, we love having all sorts of pokemon but frequently battle out with only few select pokemons. Yes, Pikachu being the favourite.

Growing up has it's own limitations, albeit we're bound to do so by having a few select besides us in the process, doesn't mean the universe doesn't have our back. We've just got everyone we need to shine on. As Chris Martin says:

Turn your magic on,
To me she'd say
Everything you want's a dream away
Under this pressure, under this weight
We are diamonds