Date / Time : Saturday, October 10, 2015 / 4:06 PM
Hello there!
I have been on Internship so I've been really busy. For those of you who are curious, I've been posted to SAFRA Mount Faber for a Marketing Events Internship. Yes, it was by choice and I indeed was very interested in the job. I am enjoying my time there as well, but I cannot divulge any information regarding my internship so I'm sorry!
Today, rather, I would like to address something that has been bothering me for awhile.
Children.
Most people who know me, know that I absolutely, truly, irrevocably... detest children. I dislike how they look, how they sound, how they act, how they dress, and how they breathe. I have this mental picture of myself killing them in incomprehensible methods when I walk pass a child. Yes, I do.
However, it recently dawned on me that, perhaps, I didn't detest them because they were annoying. I detest them because I missed being a child.
We all grow up wishing we could get older faster because we could do things that we couldn't do when we were much younger. Children wish they could be teenagers so they could hang out with their friends without their parents setting a curfew on them. Teenagers wish they would be 16 or 18 soon, so they could watch rated movies, or drink alcohol.
18 year olds wish they could be 21 soon, so that they could be allowed to vote, or to work. Many children detest school so much that they wish they could work soon, and go on holidays on their own.
Little did they know, with the freedom comes the sacrifice.
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Are you unable to picture what I'm trying to point at?
Well, let's make it easier to explain.
Remember when you heard about the tooth fairy for the first time? Your parents told you that you'd get a coin if you placed your teeth beneath your pillow and slept over it for a night. In the morning, you'd get one and you'd believe the tooth fairy existed. As you grow up, you begin to realise that your parents were the ones who placed the coin there. You laugh and smile at the children who believe in the tooth fairy in the movie, "Rise of the Guardians", because you were once like that.
Note: "once".
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Many children wish they could go out without their parents, having the freedom to travel as they wish. However, there are sacrifices to go with it. Remember when you could just extend your arms out to your parents when you were tired? They would grumble a lot, but carry you in their arms anyway. You'd get to enjoy the day in the comfort of somebody's arms. At the end of the day, you'd sit in the car and sleep on your mother's lap as your father drives you home.
Dinner is served to you, and you're nagged to shower so that you could watch some television before you sleep.
When you grow up, you dress yourself and leave the home without so much as a "Bye, I'm off" to your parents. You spend the day grumbling about the hot sun or the long walks to your friends. At dinners, you decide for yourself, and spend over 10 minutes splitting the bills with your friends. Then, you dread the long bus + train ride home, which takes approximately 1 hour.
When you're home, your parents are already asleep. You shower quietly, and sleep without drying your hair because you are so drained from the day out. Despite so, you do the exact same thing the next day.
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I hate children that make annoying noises in public places, do you? However, I realised how convenient it was for them to do that. When we hear children making annoying noises, we assume that they had horrible upbringing, or pass it off as "they are children, leave them be."
As a children, you get privileges like that. If I were to make annoying noises today at a public place, or scream at pigeons, somebody would probably make a phone call to the police station. In fact, some people may snap a photo of my actions and post it on our amazing local citizen journalism website, STOMP. There, I may be criticised as an animal hater, or a public nuisance whose school should discipline me.
It may implicate my educational institution, with people claiming that Polytechnic students are badly educated and parents should send their children to Junior Colleges. I may be branded as an animal hater, and implicate my generation in the midst of it. The public will claim that my actions meant that our generations do not understand the importance of animal protection, and criticise on how "dreadful" it will be that Singapore will be left in our hands in the near future.
As a child, you only get comments like "It's a child." or "Where are their parents???". Then, you turn away and go about your life again.
//
When you were younger, dreams were real. Dreams were possible, in the future. Stars were far, but you'd knew you grow up tall enough to catch them someday. We all believed we would grow tall enough one day to grab the stars, at some point in time.
I wrote this in my previous posts before, but I still have to explain how children gets to get away with dreaming about impractical dreams while we don't, now. As a child, you had a good 10 years before you had to make a choice about what profession you wanted to go into.
You study hard enough to get into a good secondary school, get into a good Junior College or Polytechnic course, and head to University. At 19, I have to decide whether I want to pursue a university degree upon graduation or work a few years before doing so. When I'm considering this, I also have to consider how I'm "wasting" my life away.
As a child, we waste days and days away, just dreaming about catching the stars. At 19, we kind of know that puberty helps you grow, but not enough to reach the stars. Unless you're becoming an astronaut, then I don't know anymore.
Children get away with dreaming about dreams like that, while we cannot. That's because our future is so much nearer than theirs, while our stars... seem so much further than it is to them. We wish that we could be children again, so the stars seem nearer, we could dream about being taller... and maybe, we could dream dreams that we actually wanted. Not dreams that we make ourselves have, because it's economically stable.
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One of the thing I dread about children, is how they are so small sized. Come on, size is a sensitive topic to females, and many males.
As children, we ate sweets everyday without a care on how fat we were going to get. We'd play on the playground and lose that fats at one go anyway. We hated that we had to eat healthy food, because all we wished we had for dinner was Mcdonalds'.
When I eat with my friends, at least one person at the table will be "on a diet" or "does not have enough money to spend on food". Well, usually the former is a female and the latter a male. But, that's not the case in point.
Children did not have to care whether they had abs, or stretch marks, or a double chin. They did not know what a thigh gap meant, and did not have to bother with pimples outbreak. They did not have to look at an amazing plate of pork chops, and choose to have one serving of plain bread. They did not have to look at a bottle of coke, and opt for plain water.
Of course, people would say "why don't you exercise then?". As children, exercise was running around playing catching, or playing on the playground. Have you tried going to a local playground at the age of 19? You'd get stares from so many adults, some whipping out their phones to snap a photo of you. And, you get the story.
Have you tried playing catching at 19 year old? Adults throw a awful look at you, and the phone is whipped out again.
As children, they just nag at the child to be careful and move on with their lives.
How do you expect us to exercise while having fun, like we did before? Now, the only exercise that doesn't get us dirty looks is running miles and miles quietly, or heading to the gym. That is, if we find enough time to exercise in the midst of our hectic schedules. ((of doing work))
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As children, we get to get away with so many stuff that we would have to be responsible enough to know better as adults. We were allowed to play rough with a boy in the playground without being given a glare by passerby. Our dreams were real, however impractical they were. Parents held us tight and kept us warm, despite nagging everyday.
As young adults, going through the transitional period between a teenager and adult, we no longer feel that way. We begin to understand these "responsibilities" better and can no longer use the excuse that we are still young. Our responsibilities are huge, because we are the generation that will eventually be Singapore in the near future.
Maybe that is why we hate children, maybe that is why we detest children who act the way they do, the way we did years ago. Maybe the reason why we hate them so much, is because we can no longer go back to those days. We can no longer have that immature childhood days back, and we hate that they still have it. That, we miss being a child.
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Speaking of children, here's an artiste that still looks like a child no matter how I look at her. However, I've recently really liked her songs so I'm not going to criticise her further. Ariana Grande has nice songs, even though she can't sing live. #truth