the innocence of youth

Enigma's Return To Innocence is an amazing song. Brilliant in musical terms. Magnifique in French. But do you know of any song which when you hear it, it reminds you about your childhood? I had a few of such songs and one of them was the Return To Innocence.

What seemed like a vague memory hidden behind all other memories are our childhood days-our youth. I perceive that youth comes with a sense of innocence and that sense is what all adults long for. Ask your parents and they would be happy to tell you that they would give anything to be a kid once more. How ironic it may sound that when we were young, we would dream of being an adult. When I was 5, I could not wait to be 18. And now, when we are finally at that stage of maturity, we long for our childish days where worries and anxieties did not seem to exist.

After my SPM examination, a thought once strucked me in the head. Such thought felt like a bolt of realisation that kind of jolted me from my daze, to finally come to an understanding that I was no longer a high school kid. 11 years of school did not do much to help me cope with such feelings that one day I would leave school and venture into the outside world. Though, honestly, it sounded fun and exciting at first but such naiveness came with a price. A heavy one indeed.

You see, when we were young, our parents protected us. We were unfamiliar to what the adults call : financial problems, social inequalities, prejudice, injustice and etc. In fact, when we were kids, we did not use such words at all simply because our lives were shielded from such negative vibes. And then, when we moved on to school, we were surrounded by concrete walls. They protected us again from the outside world. All that we cared were getting good grades, chasing the hottest girl in school, football, eating and having a good time with our friends.

Such innocence which came like a package alongside youth often eludes us from knowing the truth about adulthood. The world expects school leavers to behave and think like a grown-up and currently, like all 18 year olds, I am struggling to live up to that challenge. It's not an easy life. Heck. Life isn't easy anyway. Being an 18 year old is like getting stucked between a partying teenager and an 48 year old accountant in the train. It feels like you are torn between two realities.However, I sometimes would wish that I could return to days of my high school-the best moment of my life!

What I cherished the most of my youth were my high school days. I could still remember fondly how playful me and my friends were., how we studied together, how we survived detention classes together, how we would break school rules... and that was what I longed for again even now. I have always known that I had the best classmates in the world. The best that any student could ask for. Most of them whom I did not know before Form 4, we became close friends in just the first week of school. More like brothers should I put it in a more intimate way. No. I may sound gay but I'm not one. Trust me. But it was them who stood up for me, defended me whenever I faced problems or arguements with other students. Such friends are irreplaceable and could only be replaced by angels. No. I'm still not gay. Please excuse me for using such girly terms. But the fact is that I missed my classmates since all of us have gone our separate ways.

There is a part of our innocence which each and every one of us would remember and cherish for the rest of our lives. This coming new year drags us further from that innocence. It was hard to accept that my youth ended when 2004 ended.

Returning to our innocence seems more impossible as the years go by. But at least we know that we were once innocent simply because we were young once...

Have A Great New Year