Abeerism.

Continuing onward with the serious train of thought, I would now like to add some thoughts I scribbled down messily on the back of my papers while procastinating (what else?) on some thesis readings.

On education:

Having attained a Bachelors degree at this point in my life, I notice that we all spend out early lives studying what is, what isnt, black and white. Being taught to make differentiations, ones that will last us a lifetime. What is acceptable, what is not. What is socially apt, what is not. What is okay to say, what is okay to be, what is not.

But come your university days, and you learn how to unlearn all of that. Now there is no need for differences, gender and sex are two different things, everything out there is grey matter, and you have to take the most unbiased view to looking at everything.

Basically, God bless you if you join the Liberal Arts.

On reading:

. Literature is most enjoyable for those with the greatest imagination.

. People often ask me who my favourite author is. I can never answer that question. Not because I'm so well read that I have such a huge array to choose from, but because I geniunely cant. Still, people persist and this is what comes out: JK Rowling, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Frances H. Burnett, etc. And only for one reason. Because they showed me worlds where I could dream. Dream of fantastical magical things that today, I no longer remember the shape of.

A child's memory is one of the best toys an adult can have, because it is clean, like a slate. You can add so much to it, play with colours and concepts, escaping the claws of logic, reason, rationality and even practicality! Our minds as children are so pure, so untainted by systems and sense, its almost ridiculous. Have you ever re-read a book you once loved in childhood and wondered how on Earth you could have imagined so much as a child and are unable to do so now when you're bigger, better, saner and more capable of understanding something so trivial? It happened to me. I picked up Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a book I loved (and still do) as a child. And it made me realise that words which today I cannot spell and are in a grown-up's lexicon utter gibberish once made perfect sense. As a child perhaps nothing made more sense than the word Everlasting Gobstoppers, but today, I cant even imagine what they must look and feel like. 

It is possibly also for that reason that certain movies when watched as an infant have a completely different experience when watched as an adult. I dont know if the word I'm looking for is 'tolerant' but as children, movies serve a different purpose. We dont care about delivery, nor of mise-en-scene and mise-en-place, we dont care about lighting or a bad story. We care about magic. A friend recently watched The Sound Of Music and couldnt understand why she wasted 2 hours of her life. Had she watched the movie as a child maybe, the effect would have been different, as it was for the ones who'd watched it as children. Similarly I thought The King and I (1956) was annoying till the cows said moo. I am extremely tempted to delete the movie from my HDD too, but dont do so only because it took me such a long time to download it and I feel that if I have a change of heart towards the movie then I would regret not deleting it. But I think its annoying. I probably wouldnt have as a child.

Anyway, making my original point, I cant wait to have my own children, whom I can socially condition and try to hold off growing up just so their imaginations survive. At least raise them up in such a way that they can make something out of their imaginations, rather than dismiss it as a silly little thing 'I used to do as a kid'. I think children are some of the most intelligent creatures around. 

I cant wait to be around a little human being who understands colours, sights, sounds and words in an entirely different way to me. A way that if given the choice, I would love to return to.