Small People are without Small Feats
A child is a little person who lives in each of us. For we all have been children, and we have all been wronged as one. We all had our frustrations and some of us are fortunate enough to have those frustrations be with reason; or something like it. So as soon as we as children are old enough to realise this irrationality, we, from the pureness of our hearts pledge to not befall the same to other children or ours (if we are not disgusted at such though at that age).
Now, why is it that as we grow older, our image of a childhood norm diverges from what it was before. You could argue with me, as we are not children anymore, or because what was normal to us as children then is different from the norms now, or even children now are different. But I shall retort by saying, what if that time span is too short to change a norm, too short to actually make a major difference in popular culture or lifestyle to actually affect them so much to what they are now.
I have a younger cousin by the name of Aryna. She is the most angelic child I know, probably the only twelve year old I know who isn't on a diet of GMO foods, young adult fiction, MTV, and music magazines. Despite knowing that she is indeed 12, and that I at the age of twelve was immune to most things, I cannot think of myself letting her do the same. I cannot think of myself lending her any of my young adult books, or actually seeing her read, godforbid, Fanfictions.
Though I should be thinking otherwise, I should think that three years is a big difference in popular culture, I should realise that development in the world today is so fast paced now, that even a short period is enough to change our view of the cosmos. But I'm not thinking that way, I'm actually becoming quite backward on this whole child thinking thing. Heck, I want to enlighten the kid, I had gotten her a book of her choice a few weeks ago to make her read something, but I swear if she took a copy of gossip girl or whatever from the shelf I would've flipped and gone to hell and back. She picked a book with some super spy cat who speaks british english or something, (I swear I don't understand kids books these days), thankfully.
So now I completely understand why my sister, the most open minded person I know, recommended me to get Animal Farm by George Orwell rather than 1984 because "you'll need to read Animal Farm first to understand 1984" and only after err err erring hastily added "he really loves this girl and all, but they can't and all because of the government, and sex and all....". This was about a year ago, and now I get it.
This woman actually told me to tell another kid to "eff off" when I was in the standard one when I complained of being bullied. She was seventeen at the time, but now as she gets older, as much as she is being incredibly sporting and accomodating as ever, but I know somehow, some small part of her is obliged to protect me.
The reason behind this, I believe, from my observations, is that as we get older, we try to maintain that inner child of ours by creating an illusion of what it once was. As we grow older, we change certain sentiments of our memories to support our new beliefs.
We look at young children and listen to their conversations and tutt, when I was your age... or kids these days are so smart, ,I was still doing this this this at your age while you're doing this this this. Truth is, its a cycle, we were told the same things too, and we enjoyed it, we felt smug of our intelligence and our progress into maturity which took far longer for our older peers. Even then, we still do the same to children today, and we know as hell they enjoy it.
"you find yourself in a position of superiority to the child characters because you know more about the world they live in than they do and so you have a kind of patronizing, perhaps amused, protective attitude towards the characters.........most of us, at least most of us who are lucky you might say, and, we are brought up in a kind of protective bubble, even if we are not physically moved away or isolated from the adult world.. i was very aware that i did this with my own daughter when she was younger.. i censored information .. not just censored bad news on the tv, but i would have this kind of lighthearted walt disney-ish air about me when I was near her...and in fact even if you walk around in the streets with a young child.. im talking about you know, four five, all the strangers who you encounter, enter into this conspiracy with you, they too turn into walt disney characters and turn.. you walk into a shop with people arguing and they stop because they dont want this little child to realise that the world isnt quite as nice as she thinks it is, we want to fool children because i guess we want to protect them and we instinctively feel that for a while at least we should deceive them.. children do grow up in this kind of a strange bubble, and as they get older, we the adults , we manage very carefully what kind of information gets dropped into this bubble.. " Kazuo Ishiguro, 23rd March, The Guardian Book Club Live Discussion Podcast on Never Let Me Go with John Mullan.
Ok, I did have to listen to a two minute part of the whole thing again and again to get those lines. And even though he was using it as an explanation to the metaphor of the boarding school in Never Let Me Go, I believe this whole protective thing is very well said, very true and well said indeed.
Now, why is it that as we grow older, our image of a childhood norm diverges from what it was before. You could argue with me, as we are not children anymore, or because what was normal to us as children then is different from the norms now, or even children now are different. But I shall retort by saying, what if that time span is too short to change a norm, too short to actually make a major difference in popular culture or lifestyle to actually affect them so much to what they are now.
I have a younger cousin by the name of Aryna. She is the most angelic child I know, probably the only twelve year old I know who isn't on a diet of GMO foods, young adult fiction, MTV, and music magazines. Despite knowing that she is indeed 12, and that I at the age of twelve was immune to most things, I cannot think of myself letting her do the same. I cannot think of myself lending her any of my young adult books, or actually seeing her read, godforbid, Fanfictions.
Though I should be thinking otherwise, I should think that three years is a big difference in popular culture, I should realise that development in the world today is so fast paced now, that even a short period is enough to change our view of the cosmos. But I'm not thinking that way, I'm actually becoming quite backward on this whole child thinking thing. Heck, I want to enlighten the kid, I had gotten her a book of her choice a few weeks ago to make her read something, but I swear if she took a copy of gossip girl or whatever from the shelf I would've flipped and gone to hell and back. She picked a book with some super spy cat who speaks british english or something, (I swear I don't understand kids books these days), thankfully.
So now I completely understand why my sister, the most open minded person I know, recommended me to get Animal Farm by George Orwell rather than 1984 because "you'll need to read Animal Farm first to understand 1984" and only after err err erring hastily added "he really loves this girl and all, but they can't and all because of the government, and sex and all....". This was about a year ago, and now I get it.
This woman actually told me to tell another kid to "eff off" when I was in the standard one when I complained of being bullied. She was seventeen at the time, but now as she gets older, as much as she is being incredibly sporting and accomodating as ever, but I know somehow, some small part of her is obliged to protect me.
The reason behind this, I believe, from my observations, is that as we get older, we try to maintain that inner child of ours by creating an illusion of what it once was. As we grow older, we change certain sentiments of our memories to support our new beliefs.
We look at young children and listen to their conversations and tutt, when I was your age... or kids these days are so smart, ,I was still doing this this this at your age while you're doing this this this. Truth is, its a cycle, we were told the same things too, and we enjoyed it, we felt smug of our intelligence and our progress into maturity which took far longer for our older peers. Even then, we still do the same to children today, and we know as hell they enjoy it.
"you find yourself in a position of superiority to the child characters because you know more about the world they live in than they do and so you have a kind of patronizing, perhaps amused, protective attitude towards the characters.........most of us, at least most of us who are lucky you might say, and, we are brought up in a kind of protective bubble, even if we are not physically moved away or isolated from the adult world.. i was very aware that i did this with my own daughter when she was younger.. i censored information .. not just censored bad news on the tv, but i would have this kind of lighthearted walt disney-ish air about me when I was near her...and in fact even if you walk around in the streets with a young child.. im talking about you know, four five, all the strangers who you encounter, enter into this conspiracy with you, they too turn into walt disney characters and turn.. you walk into a shop with people arguing and they stop because they dont want this little child to realise that the world isnt quite as nice as she thinks it is, we want to fool children because i guess we want to protect them and we instinctively feel that for a while at least we should deceive them.. children do grow up in this kind of a strange bubble, and as they get older, we the adults , we manage very carefully what kind of information gets dropped into this bubble.. " Kazuo Ishiguro, 23rd March, The Guardian Book Club Live Discussion Podcast on Never Let Me Go with John Mullan.
Ok, I did have to listen to a two minute part of the whole thing again and again to get those lines. And even though he was using it as an explanation to the metaphor of the boarding school in Never Let Me Go, I believe this whole protective thing is very well said, very true and well said indeed.
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