Growing Up (?)

Featured image: Kenyon Cox, Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Yesterday morning, I woke up late (around 9.00 am) and got scolded at by my mother for the same. Some might say that 9.00 am is not all that bad. True, but not if you’ve been going to bed late and waking up at this time or thereabouts for over a week (holidays, you see).

Now we all know how a parent is… If you go wrong on five occasions, he/she tries to talk sense into you on the first four of those. On the fifth occasion, however, he/she scolds sense into you, not only for that fifth slip-up, but also for the earlier four. It gets even worse if both your parents are present at the scolding ceremony, because then, they gang up on you and start yelling at you for completely different things, at times even contradicting each other (I’ll give you an example of the ‘contradicting’ bit shortly).

Anyway. So.
Yesterday, Mum went from scolding me about waking up late to not being disciplined to not being independent to being cold and unemotional to not caring about her and Dad. Then came the icing on the cake… Dad.
He hit the ground running: You have no discipline. When you go to another country to complete your education, you are not going to be able to live there with this lack of independence. You haven’t renewed your license yet. You haven’t been practising driving. You haven’t found out what the passport renewal procedure is. You don’t-
<at this point, Mum started speaking>
Mum: Don’t bother telling her, she doesn’t care about us.
Dad: Okay, you’re taking it too far. Don’t say such things. You know she cares about us.
Mum: She doesn’t act like it. She thinks we’re her slaves. She doesn’t help me around the house-
<here, I had to interrupt because Mum was pure lying>
Me: I ask you whether you need help, don’t I?! You just say ‘no’ every time. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do and I’ll do it, no questions asked! How will I know what to do if you don’t tell me.
Mum: You’re old enough to know that without my telling you!
Dad: Okay, calm down, you two.
Me: How am I supposed to calm down?! She expects me to read her mind and just know how I have to help her with chores and all. I can’t do that! That’s not how I function! Give me some work and I will do it!
Dad: Forget about helping around the house, focus on bringing some discipline into your own life right now.
Mum: What do you mean ‘forget about helping around the house’?! She’s a part of the family, she better behave like it!
Dad: Yeah, but not without bringing some self discipline first!
(See, told you parents contradict each other at times while scolding their kids.)
Me: Okay fine! I’ll bring some discipline in my life plus I’ll help Mum out, but you’re supposed to tell me what work I have to do; I am not capable of mind reading!
<this went on till I physically noted down a list of household chores I’m supposed to do>

[The above account of how yesterday morning’s events unfolded is abridged and involves much less drama from Mum, lecturing from Dad, and yelling and crying from me. This has been done for the convenience of the reader. You’re welcome.]

Anyway, lecture over, class dismissed. Mum and Dad left the room. I shut my eyes. “You’re a grownup now, so you’re supposed to act like one,” my brain told me (more accurately, my brain told… well… my brain).

Which brings me to my point- more like my question- How to act like a grownup?

Sometimes I feel there’s a book, a guide of sorts, that all human beings get the day they turn 18, that tells them how to talk, how to walk, how to smile, when to smile, when to laugh instead, whether to respond or react, when to question, when to shut up, why to shut up, et cetera.

Maybe it’s called ‘The User Manual of Life’.
Maybe I didn’t get mine.

My parents think I’m self centered as hell, that I am condescending, that I swear at them in my mind every time they yell at me, that I’m cold and distant, that I have no value for family.
But the truth is that none of those things are true.

In reality, I am only about as self-centered as anybody else my age might be (go ahead, I know you’re dying to use the term ‘ME Generation’ here); I have intermittent waves of diffidence, which is the exact opposite of condescension; I don’t swear at my parents, but cry on the inside every time they scold me because of having let them down; I’m cold and distant because at some point during my childhood, I convinced myself that emotions make us weak; I value my family more than I value anything else, so much so that I thank God for it pretty much every time I pray.

But they won’t see that. Nobody will. “Your thoughts are yours only,” Agatha Christie’s character, Parker Pyne had once said. I couldn’t agree more. Our thoughts are indecipherable by everyone but ourselves. That’s the reason the image of us that is defined by what others think of us and the image we have of ourselves are two separate entities.
They have nothing in common… Zero. Nil. Nada. And yet we carry on packing ourselves into this mould society makes for us, sometimes even forgetting how we really are.

The presence of these mutually exclusive you’s becomes more evident when you grow up- when people start expecting things from their version of you, but when your version is busy humming the title song of Doraemon or playing F.R.I.E.N.D.S reruns in your head.

With time, I think it becomes easier to toggle the two- to switch from the exterior to the interior and then back again- at least I hope it does.

I guess that’s what growing up is all about- fitting into that mould society has made for you without letting it shape you.

P.S.: My parents might get slightly mad after reading this. This is for them: Aai, Baba, I hope this article doesn’t make me seem even more distant and cold. If it does, I swear I didn’t intend it to. Love you! :-*

P.P.S.: To all my readers: This article is less serious than it looks, so please don’t ask me stuff like, “Why do you write about such serious stuff all the time?” Chill! x-)