Many a times during different points in your life, people
ask you about the one incident after the occurrence of which, you realized that
you’d grown up. The mind works furiously as you try to think of that one
incident, finally coming to stop between going on the metro alone or picking
your class 11 subjects without any help and for less independent minds, reading
Yann Martel’s ‘Life of Pi’ and understanding it.
My take on that question is a little different. The way I
was brought up was different from most other people in my class. Freedom was
given, not earned. There were definitive boundaries but I was still freer than
most others. So “the first time I got freedom” is not my incident.
Others may say that that they grew up after their first real
relationship. I have had that, but the change I felt after it was over wasn’t
the feeling of growing up.
There are so many times in life when people say that they
promised to do something (or stop doing it) and they change. They grow up.
This, I can agree with. Because I had tried promising myself a countless number
of things, commitments I would honour, promises I would keep and changes I
would make. However all this heartfelt proclamations would disappear from sight
and mind just a week after they were made. But then one day, I realized that I
messed up. I realized that if I did not fix that mess not tomorrow, but right
now, I would forever be stuck in the same cycle, of there being a next time.
Next time I mess up, next time I break a promise, next time I don’t honour a
commitment. And at that point, when I decided to leave “next time” behind
forever, that was the point where I grew up.
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