Afterthought: GROWING UP AS A PERSON BUT A CHILD FOREVER

by Julius R. Paner

Whenever I am in the outdoors especially when I climb mountains with friends and buddies in LOGSAC, the excitement will always be tremendous. There is always that freedom to express myself without borders, unlike when I am in the lowlands where all movements are always put behind the bars of limitations and maximum thresholds. In the mountains, I can always do what I want, with nature and everything in the vertical world as my only discrete witnesses.  

Being in the mountains also allows me to unfold the child in me. With less than half a century before I will turn 40 years old, I have always been longing to go back to being a child once more. In a complex world where everything requires emotional and psychological maturity, I always choose to be juvenile, that’s why I always climb mountains. When I get to the top of the mountains or be with the community in the extreme rural areas of the Philippines, I always mingle with the village people, along with their kids.

Just last 3^rd week of April this year during our Mt. Apo Holy Week climb, I played basketball with the kids in sitio Tumpis, a basecamp that had long been our abode every holy week. I bet in a peso-peso scheme with the children and before I knew it, I instantly blended well with the child in Tumpis. We were immediate teammates and majority of them are on their elementary school days. There I realized that sovereignty and self-determination are best experience with children and not with adults. There I realized that it doesn’t cost so much to buy happiness, it is only a matter of unloading the child in our respective selves.

In a separate instance dated June 1, 2014; I cried in front of my desktop while watching my favorite NBA team Oklahoma City Thunder beaten by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2014 NBA Western Conference Finals. I expected my team to win the battle at least in that epic game 6 but Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook fall short of their efforts, forcing OKC to settle for a conference runner up citation. My crying wasn’t really something of a huge deal, but my crying was a sort of relieving the frustrations. It was some sort of cleansing the terrible emotions, an option of embracing defeat and overcoming failure. After that, I was relieved. Better luck next time OKC, and to my favorite player KD.

Indeed, crying has been my personal way to accept the cruelty of life, even when I was a child. Every time I lost to a “tigso” game with my neighbors before or the failure to win in a crucial marble game (holinay) and rubber match game (shatik), crying has been my direct outlet, and somehow it is very effective.

Today, every time I remember my childhood days, I will always smile because it somehow helped me overcome the hurdles of life. It made me think how good it is to be back to the simple childhood days being filled only with friendship and indelible memories. Every time I encounter difficult times today with complications brought about by the times, I just let go of my being 36 years old and act as if I am 9 years old.

I am sure therefore that each one of us has our own child in us, and it is always good to be a child forever. We might have grown up and old in this world where we could no longer recite our nursery rhymes and carry our character school stuffs, but being a child forever in the midst of progressing human maturity is a lot better.

Certainly, in every real man a child is hidden that wants to play and enjoy life without borders.