Somewhere between yesterday and 10 years ago, we grew up

 

Where’d the days go, when all we did was play?

                                                                    Paolo Nutini

Even if it is not a thing to say, eventually you will realise this sitting in your college or office, wherever you are right now. That a part of you grew in these years—not just a little one but your whole identity, from the day you realised how to tie your shoe to this very day you are living. You cannot remember the last day you played those cartoon cards or ran on the streets and came home drinking water, as you had never drunk it before. This world operates with time continuously, and our lives change a little bit more every day, or, may I say, every time. We forget the last time we said freeze or ran after each other just because we had to save ourselves from getting caught. The ice cream we used to have cost just 5 INR or less at some point in time.

When our childhood is over, we try to relive the glee we felt by looking through photos. When you graduate from college, you learn to dial a few numbers at 3 a.m. on random Saturday nights. When you return from a vacation, you try to visit those spots and find solace in your city or by unpacking the souvenirs you acquired along the way. The photos of random sky, moon, or sunset photos taken with your phones, which you scroll through to find the same sky above you. The conversations you had with strangers on the train Pack snacks, toys, and your playing cards so you can play with the others.

It’s important to preserve something worth preserving. It’s also important to know the difference and the changes we have been through these past years, which are more difficult than ever. But the life we lived 10 years ago is worth having back. The handwritten letter from your family who lives far away is the greatest gift because they are not just letters but memories.

It’s always the small things that remind us of how we were and how innocence and time were the smallest words but had great meaning amongst those big words we use nowadays.

Every day there is something new to learn, but the most important thing that you are or will be proud of is that you are independent. You wear independence as an accessory, just like you carry your pride, smile, and kindness. You shop for groceries and go out to shop. It’s habitual now, but it wasn’t there before, or was it?

There is always something that you will hold on to and that will stick with you. But not only those things will matter, but also how many things you learned along the way here.

It’s been 10 years, and now your routine is different. You go to work, you come back home, and you work, study, read, or write. And again, it repeats every day: there is nothing special, and you wonder what I will do to make it special. We are normal people; we have to do extra hard work to make our day extra special. And it’s important because it’s not half of your day that matters or what you do at work, college, or school. It’s what you do for yourself on the other half that matters. What gives you peace so that the next day you won’t be bickering? Sometimes an extemporaneous plan works better than a planned one.

Ten years is a long time to see where you were and where you are now. Often, when the interviewer asks you what you want to be in 5 years, you try to remember what you want to be or what you want to become. It’s not only me who is stuck on that question; everyone is, and no one knows what they want to be in the next few years. Because as we move forward, step by step, our world changes a bit more. So how can someone figure out what they want to be in five years? Everybody is not an overthinker or a planner. Even if they did, they wouldn’t tell because, in a world where every trip plan you make with your friends is cancelled, in 5 years a lot will change. It’s not important what you want to be in five years. But who do you want to be in 5 years or 10 years?