Pondering My Childhood

By Johnny Denden
Lead Convenor of HAPI-Cagayan De Oro

As an adult, I find myself doing little things for myself to keep me sane and balanced. When I was young, I did not care much about world affairs. Now, I feel a huge responsibility resting on my shoulders. It is not pleasant to constantly make the best version of yourself and match the competition in the world arena.

Becoming an adult is an inevitable journey but one can’t help but reminisce on how beautiful childhood was. As a child, we tend to climb and walk across unending dangers with limitless speed and strength; as working-class adults, it feels like we will never get that energy back. We may think that we know it all already, but this mentality is a prison. We call this “adulthood” yet it seems like a nightmare. It doesn’t free us from the agony of this world; if anything, it becomes some kind of curse that makes us want to go back to our childhood days.

The present is so annoying as to be a threat to our very existence; everything we do might be a problem tomorrow, and everything we want tends to be so calculated that the process itself becomes a chore. This burden haunts us every night, giving us anxiety over our endeavors.

Adulthood demands that everything I do should be precise and perfect. The reason I rail against this is that I’ve been a rebel in my own way since childhood: if my parents wanted to ground me, for instance, I would not come home until I’d exhausted my days on the other side of the world. I would go back to my home suffering the wrath of my parents as a consequence but at least I enjoyed it and got some memories out of it. Life works differently depending on what stage you are in it. During my childhood, I only valued enjoyment without worries; as an adult, every risk could lead to devastation.