I am a 21 Year Old Kid. Yes I emphasize on kid because this number has really caught me off guard. 21 is malignantly pleasing especially the “1”
in 21. It marks the beginning of some sort of individualization. A venture into
self-discovery while you witness the evolution of the old adolescent self. You predict the near future with your so called realistic ideals because it's all about being practical then. But i say turn down the volume of this talk on consciousness. Thanks to Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”
for a little didactic lesson about consciousness as an illness. Of course I can’t
speak from that much of experience and thought that embittered him at his time but
his thoughts have teased my thought process. One needs a little delusion. A
little misguided trip to …… as long as it’s not the Bermuda Triangle. But what
if the Bermuda Triangle is heavenly? What if people who are believed to be “disappeared”
there disappeared for their own good? That’s a ridiculous thought you may think
as the triangle is claimed not to exist but my intention here is to depict the metaphorical
meaning. We all have our own Bermuda Triangles either both discovered and
returned from with no fascination or frequently visited or well lived in and
worn out or a dark continent or a “neverland”. Are we all living in it constantly
and don’t know the exit because we are oblivious to the parallel alternative? Is
there a parallel alternative? Are we already out of the triangle? What are the peripheries of our triangles? I don’t
know which category my Triangle falls into and how big it is but I do believe
my triangle and its parallel exist in fact they co-exist. It’s the process of
distinguishing between the triangle and the parallel alternative triangle that I
have come to learn from the “one” in Twenty-One. This is how insane this number
has driven me. I have sunk in my own mire in the preceding years of my Twenty-One
years but in this “one” year somehow I feel or rather hope I am rising
gradually to float above it.
I am aware that I just contradicted myself but this contradiction leads
to my point which is that consciousness is like sour grapes. It’s disillusioning
and spiteful, but at the same time essential to keep your foot on the ground. One
needs to know the boundaries of their Bermuda Triangle and the return
route. If there is no parallel alternate
triangle then realize that there has to be one. On the other hand if there is no
Bermuda triangle then create one. Create is a controversial word but it’s the right
one because as you educate yourself about what reality is you must have a
little elopement from reality too. A little bit of both is essential. That is
what Mrs. Twenty and her child One have preached me.
Now the kid part. I say I am a twenty-one year old kid because I want to
be that kid. While the twenty-one is “responsible” for handling the adulthood
department, the kid is to “manage” and “maintain” the slight amount of
childlike candid perspective and transparency we all need in order to preclude
ourselves from utter despair. The “one” a.k.a the child has had me dumbfounded.
Apart from teaching me a little lesson about the inter-marriage of reality and the
bubble world she has also displeased me by revealing my incompetency. So now
you know that I am irresponsible as I am not obeying “one’s” teachings just
because those teachings exposed me to reality which consists of my incompetency.
Thus this pre-mature child called one
and the kid are in the midst of a hostile environment. They demur each other but
at the same time they need each other too. They are inter-related.
Alas! My attempt to dodge the
word responsibility is botched and the siblings - management and maintenance
just had to tag along! Why am I so embittered by the child “one”? It’s because
she introduced me to responsibility and its function i.e. taking responsibility
for my own blunders by admitting to them therefore accepting my incompetency.
And the sad news is that I am incompetent in applying that responsibility. Here
“Twenty” which was cornered all this while comes to the rescue as the
mother, wisely representing my knowledge and faith. She supports “one’s” teaching. It’s
not as ironic as is sounds because the child is introducing me to the unexpected while twenty just like a mother
helps in facing the unexpected by reminding me of all the knowledge I have
gained from my experiences. All she emphasizes on is faith. That’s the pleasing
part. It’s explained malignantly because we learn it that way. Thus we have
sour grapes! At the end who doesn’t love grapes?
I shall conclude by elaborating on the “kid’s” role. The siblings – “management”
and “maintenance” which the “kid” recalls after rummaging through my rotten
memory of them, are gladly reacquainted with. This kid constantly alarms me
about keeping my childlike innocence, more importantly maintaining it. Yes,
maintenance shows the right way to keep that innocence. This innocence traces
us back to those moral values classes taught in school. Values about
transparency and honesty. This is where management steps in, the toughest part.
All the lessons taught about reality and fantasy, responsibility, transparency and
maintaining innocence are to be managed by the Twenty-One year old kid in order
to be the Twenty-One Year Old Kid!
