I have no idea what overcame me that I wrote this piece of work, but I am sure all those who ARE in their teens and all those who WERE, both would understand it. Perception is what matters. Isnt there a famous saying? "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder".
Read and start thinking.:)
There is so much stuff I have written in my life, but never once about MY life (yes, I do decide to emphasize on that particular word). So, here it goes. Or rather, here I go.
I write in my most vulnerable state, about the things which any normal teenager goes through. I will not exactly call myself a normal teenager, but I am getting there.
You may say that this 19 (almost 20) year old is a little rebellious, a little eccentric, a slight (okay, maybe lots) craver of carte blanche. The point is, one can be very different, so totally based on their own dogmas of life, completely based on their own logic, that their surroundings find it difficult to comprehend or decipher them. I definitely belong to this category. And the biggest catch of it all is that I find it an extremely arduous task to explain this very logic to the crowd. Maybe one could tell me how to delineate or outline the self-logic to, at times relentless, intractable crowd.
I may even guarantee that more than 70% of us feel the way I feel. We feel the desperate need to do our own thing, to feel and to explore this world. But the forces of nature are not always under our command. On another note, maybe we should not expect them to be, because they never work at anyone’s command. But then, they don’t work for us either. There was a quote by Logan Pearsall Smith that I came across during my continued surfing of the internet (not an unusual activity where we are concerned, I’ll give you that).
“Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own”.
And it could only make me think deeper and deeper. Maybe it was true. If it is, then, can the crowd I spoke about earlier see the way it is expected to be seen? Then again two words instantly form in my “young” mind – maybe, maybe not.
We teenagers are decried, berated, subjected to a lot of criticism in our life. If I could, I would add many more synonyms here. Agreed it is for our own good. But can one ALWAYS know the well-being of another?
We do try to form a win-win situation between ourselves and the rest of the world. All that occurs is a win-lose situation. Well, mostly! Somehow, this sentence reminds me of a poem I had read in ‘Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul’. It is very easy to write a short summary of it here.
‘A girl goes to this store dressed shabbily and as if she is the most colorful creature on this planet. In our language, they are called ‘the Punks’. The security guard doesn’t take his eyes off her, somehow, quite vehemently believing that she would steal. So, when the alarm actually goes off, he makes his way towards this girl in utmost surety just to see her pay for her blue nail paint while the rest of the security nabs a well dressed woman.’ I am sure there isn’t even a need to guess who the culprit is.
Prejudices, pre-assumptions all formed in our favor. I should not use the word ‘favor’ but then I am not sure if I can find a better one as I am half wanting to sleep. But is it fair? Why is there a need to be so biased? Is it that difficult to accept us the way we are?
I know I have deviated from the main point. It all started with my life and has come down to our life. So, maybe I have already gotten there. Maybe, I am one of the normal teenagers. And very soon I will 'have been' one of the normal teenagers. Well, the age changes, but the spirit doesn’t.
2 comments:
good.going through the pangs of being a teenager is a wonderful experience which must come in every human beings life, otherwise the fun will be lost. this is the period when one is so full of energy, strength, josh and hope. this is also the time of hormonal changes and all this affects one's thinking and personality. so being a teenager and being seen as an outcast is perfectly 'normal'. on the other hand a teenager is knocking at the doors of the big beautiful world. one yearns for an exclusive identity, one is looking for that eternal beutiful love and romance which must happen and above all there is a subconscious desire to survive in comfort, and a desire to conquer the world.
i myself have undergone these pangs and in retrospect i feel that with a little guidance this can be the golden age in anyones life. the wiser ones hold their horses just a little bit and it pays them off in the long run.as a teenager i also thought that i was a champion. but a look around showed me that everyone in my category was feeling the same way. then how was i different? i also thought i was a rebel but when i evaualted my actions i was compelled to think whether i was a rebel without a cause or a rebel without pause? i also thought that the world did not understand me but then i realised that since i too did not 'actually' understand the world this was a naturally logical situation- fair enough. was i an achiever? i found that billions before me, billions of my contemporaries and probably billions after me would achieve as much as me. so i was a good mediocre at my best. i also read about achievers like james watt, newton, einstine, edison, franklin, babbage, lincoln, marie curie, joan of arc, mahatma gandhi, lal bahadur shastri -who used to swim across ganges to pursue his passion- education, and countless more. i found that these were people who were real achievers, and they achieved in spite of much greater odds than i faced in my life.it was they who had 'fire in the belly' passion. then i realised that these were the real rebels. my accidental knowledge about these people made me introspect, and i found that i only had self inflicted limits. one good thing emerged that i stopped blaming others for my failures and shortcomings(limitations) and this gave me a lot of peace of mind. i realised that all of us could achieve but not without effort. it was not that i accepted my mediocrity, but yes i was comfortable with it because i realised that i was like a small cog in that big machine of life and that even a small cog plays a very important and its failure can bring the machine to a grinding halt. the introspection also enabled to analyse my ownself dispassionately and gave me the strength to stand criticism from others in a better way. so life moved forward.
sometimes the defination of 'rebel' generates a lot of confusion. mallika shehrawat calls herself a rebel but by relentlessly portraying herself as a sex object for the pleasure of the masses she turns out to be the greatest conformist. so do hundreds of other girls who eventually end up on modelling ramps and beauty pageants. aren't they endorsing eternal conformity?
moving further and talking about appearances. why does a police uniform fail to inspire and an army uniform still commands respect? afterall both are very similar. it is because of actions of the large chunk people associated with those uniforms. so, that is how tags automatically apply. so, why was the punk picked up at the deptt store? it is because her clan has indulged in widespread nuiscence of all sorts. people have first hand experience of their behaviour on the streets, they have read about it in newspapers and saw it on TV. by donning punkish outfits she announced that she was that 'type'. even punks do not and can not stand each other, what to talk about others. that is why the tag. we all perpetuate stereotypes and this was just another incident.
yes. the action of elder generation appears to be prejudices. but the elder generation calls it 'experience' having the privilege of having gone through similar phase in their lives.
the dilemma of teenage will reamain and thankfully so. because it is only by dynamic interaction the right path will emerge. in fact it is a great responsibility on the shoulders of the older generation to help the teens to cope up with the changing times afterall the today's world is their own legacy. the questions in young minds must be answered with endless patience .
thats a REAL GOOD ONE. ur dad already said what he has to but its still difficult to deal with rebels i guess. perhaps, imposible. coz ur pt of view is invariably shunned down....almost 99% times. very rarely is it taken in the right spirits. n then u get forced to do what others expect u to do. n deviate from most of the things that u like to do. n then 50 yrs down the line, when u'v grown old, u realize that u'v got absolutely nothing to do now, ur kids hav either left u or u'v left them coz u want thm to hav all that u didnt(well, m hopim u n me understand that n wont force things down our kids' throats).... n then we realize that WE HAD SACRIFICED SOOOOOOOO MUCH FOR OUR PARENTS, FAMILIES, CHILDREN ETC ETC ETC.... that now we start pickin up things we USED TO DO WHEN WE WERE YOUNG ! buts i dream n hope i dont hav to see that day when i return to doing something i m so fond of. i hope i dont get carried away with all this mad rush n find myself really LOST someday ! i just hope i dont reach that time period in my life ! n i hope the same for u too n for all the people, like us, who THINK DIFFERENTLY... n whom the rest of the world DOESNT UNDERSTAND(if i may say so)!as for now, welcome to the world of "DIFFERENT PEOPLE !"
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