in•no•cence
[in-uh-suh ns] –noun
1.The quality or state of being innocent; freedom from sin ormoral wrong.
2.Freedom from legal or specific wrong; guiltlessness: Theprisoner proved his innocence.
3.Simplicity; absence of guile or cunning; naiveté.
Do you ever wish that you can turn back time and
go back to being a small little kid?
Sheltered and protected.
When the world was so much simpler when
we are free to roam the vast fields of our imagination, sail
through the seas of creativity,
opening treasure troves of new discoveries and
fight the monsters of our own fear.
To be free of responsibility, of life's
hardships. To laugh, love and cry at our hearts content
allowing our emotions to flow unobstructed
like the Nile cutting its way through Egypt.
To have the sky of dreams above your head and
the solid ground of life under your feet.
I do.
I think that my years as a small kid were truly the happiest time of my life. It was back when life was perfect, when I was still too young to sense the deep undercurrents in my parent's relationship that would eventually broke the dam of their marriage. It was when life truly felt like it was worth living.
Back then, we didn't really stay in a proper house, so our family stayed in quite a small building which can double up as a shop. We didn't really have much at that point in time. But it didn't matter. For me, as long as there's still a roof above my head, a bed to sleep on, food to keep me from going hungry and of course my family to love me and keep me save, life was as it should be.
We had quite a few neighbours at that time as quite a lot of people also lived in the buildings next to us and all around us. We were never a close knit community but it never mattered for us children. Every afternoon when the sun has started its descent, when an orange colour started to seep into its rounded form, the kids come out to play. As children we always have the uncanny capability of making friends almost instantaneously. A few brief introductions of who we are and off we go playing together like we've been playing together forever. It was our innocence that allows us to trust so willingly, to make friends with anyone not caring who they are or where they come from, something I believe we all should revive amidst today’s world of judgements.
As kids it was never a matter of what should we do today, but rather what can't we do today. Skipping rope, hide and seek, hopscotch, or just a simple game of tag. Our imagination takes us to places no man has ever discovered. Sailing through the seven seas as pirates of the Caribbean, discovering hidden treasures in hidden tombs of our own making a la Indiana Jones, and of course our favourite, the game of pretend whereby some of us takes on adult roles as teachers, chefs and any other profession you could ever dreamed off. Now that I look back at my early childhood days it always fascinates me how as children, we really loved to pretend and take on adult roles that we see in our daily lives. There’s this fascination for us as children seeing the vast and unknown adult world, the myriad of things that you could do as an adult as well as the authority that you have as an adult, free to be who you are and never restricted, unlike us children. We never really realize how lucky we were as children, and how free we truly are as compared to adults.
Our innocence and our imagination can take us anywhere we wanted to go and find friends in the most uncanny situations. However it also allows us to create monsters from simple fear and misunderstanding. This was especially true when it came to the old man living just down the street from where we used to play. He was a quiet man if I do remember correctly, rarely talks to anyone beyond that is necessary. His face is ridden with gorges, valleys and canyons carved by the passage of time. We used to have a game of guessing how old the man really was, just for the fun of it. A sparse savannah of white barely hides his scalp stained with the marks of age. He was hunched and every time he walks around with his trusty old cane, we could see just how much effort is needed just for him to move a simple 5 steps. He always wears the same old sleeveless T shirt and a red checked Sarong. He spends most of the time sitting in from of his house on his little green plastic chair, just staring out to the streets sometimes dozing off to a fitful nap bugged by flies landing on his skin and maybe nightmares. He was always alone. Never did we see a wife or any of his probably all-grown-up-by-now children visit him. To us children he was a frightening figure. An unknown, a mystery. He would always sit there and just stare right at the streets, an act we children finds unsettling or even creepy. It was out of this silly fear of the old man that we would make up stories of him. Stories like how he is actually an evil wizard who will kidnap naughty children to be cooked in a bubbling pot of vat or that he will capture naughty boys and cut their pee-pee (it was what we used as children to describe penis) if they were to be so unlucky to have crossed paths with him on the streets.
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