Childhood

"When I was a child...". Sound familiar? People think a lot about their childhood. Mostly they're just contrasting their, nowadays, so tedious lives with their lively, imaginative, adventurous, well, fabulous childhoods. Of course everything was better then. But is it really so? Is our childhood the best time of our life? You hear people talking about how they'll never be as happy as they were then. This is something that's, to me, really peculiar. This doesn't take my thoughts to a happy Astrid Lindgren -childhood. This takes my thoughts to a dogmatic adulthood, were we're governed by the laws and chains of our own minds. A time when all we have is our memories. Nothing new ever happens, nothing makes us really happy. A real dystopia. Personally I don't think adulthood's any way worse than childhood. We had happy time then, we have happy times now. We have worries now, but believe me; we had worries back then too. "But they weren't any real worries", one might think. My answer to that is simply: Bullshit. How come? According to OED a worrying is to keep thinking about unpleasant things that might hapen or about problems that you have. I have to say I really like that definition. A worry is a thing that feels unpleasant to us. Not being able to go play with your friends might feel just as unpleasant as not knowing how you'll pay your next rent. We have to see it in perspective to our own existence and life. To conclude what I'm trying to say here: I think every phase you go through in your life (physical or psychological) is just what you make of it. Remember the past, embrace it, but don't dwell in it.

Now when we're into childhood... One thing that scares the living shit out of me is what our media\IT -society does to children. Children don't have any freedom these days. In Finland they get a cell phone at an age that scares me. They're parents can, and trust me they do, get a hold of them at any given time. Because they're too afraid that something will happen. It's ridiculous! And in fact, it doesn't even help parents, it destroys their lives too by giving them the opportunity to get a hold of their kids, and thereby making them too worried about them all the time! What will the future look like when children haven't had the possibility to learn by their own mistakes? Will they do the mistakes they should have done in their childhood when they're adults? Is it in early adulthood when they'll start braking rules, just for the fun of it? Will children have any secrets any more? How will they cope with real life after all this pampering!? You can't just avoid problems by not letting children go through them on their own, which is the only way to learn! Everything can't be easy! Life has to have it's share of hardships and problems. Some things are of the manner that they have to be experienced to understand. There are some things that people have to learn and cope with by themselves; WELCOME TO LIFE ON PLANET EARTH!