Travelogue: Office Garden

 

- Rahul 

Thoughts: "When you grow up, your heart dies"

I happened to watch a 1985 film named "The Breakfast Club" only now, which is a story of five teenage students. The teenage students are discussing how bad their parents are, how they fight with each other, how they put too much pressure on the kids, and then this quote comes, "When you grow up, your heart dies"

Obviously, the brutality of this quote made me stop for a moment. 

Now, I am way past the teen age, and I do not feel I have grown up to the point where my heard is dead, but of course I am "grown up" to some extent and the fact that this quote startled me also tells that I could understand it better.

This idea is true to a large extent. If we look at the evil grown-up people, certainly they were also innocent till some point of their life, certainly in childhood and many times also till teenage. But the reverse is not definitely true; and we can't say that everyone who is innocent and fair in teenage would become a bad person once grown up. There are all kinds of grownup people, good or bad, as there are all kinds of teenagers too, good or bad. But one thing is certain: the grownup people react to same things differently. 

I think there is one thing that these teenagers in the movie would never comprehend, and it is that growing up is painful. Every grownup person carries certain pains inside one's heart, and most of those are unexpressed. Quite often, the grownup people take those pains to their ashes. And it is no funny matter. 

Given a choice, many grownup people would also like to act and behave in the same idealistic, righteous and reckless manner which is trademark of the youth; but most of the time there is no choice. The burdens of expectations and responsibilities of the practical life weighs down people's hearts and souls. It is very easy to say, "when you grow up, your heart dies", but the process of a dying heart is more painful than the realization that it is dead. 

This age-based conflict in human society is one more interesting aspect to our social life. Everyone thinks that only he is right, and the other person is wrong; while the truth is that everyone is both right and wrong at the same time in their own ways. All said and done, we all need to keep a tab on ourselves, even if we can't do anything about it.  

- Rahul