All grown up

I've recently begun to understand the structure of the process that people call 'growing up'. It's quite simple. The vitriolic resistance for your shortcomings is replaced by a smug delight sauteed in their familiarity. Your vices are glorified, projected on a slick high definition screen of moral ambiguity. And all that you ever held as outdated and moribund becomes inheritance. Family feuds, food preferences, social beliefs and Fareeda Khanum ghazals. Amelia Airheart said she flew because 'it released her mind from the tyranny of petty things'. With all due respect to her passion, it's why any of us work. To grow up. To re-prioritize so as to label 'comfort' as 'no.1'. Comfort has the capability of killing off the strongest of passions. Put money and sex in one basket and love and tedious hardwork in the other, and you'll see basket 'a' knock basket 'b' out of the park. The whole point of working is to lose sight of what is important so as to resent your life when it's beyond the point of redemption. It's part of a larger process called 'death'. Ash ridden, liquor soaked evenings of little relevance become anchors of a ship sailing to a place that no one wants to go to. And you even find a woman to love and a house to live in along the way. And you find joy in little things. And when you lie down in bed alone listening the magical concept of music put to poetry (ghazals) you wonder what makes you happy. What you want to do. What you want to be. You wonder what you want from life. You wonder where you came from, where you came to and where you want to go. And the only real answer that comes back to you is your annual tax liability. Growing up isn't anything like it should be. It is a self indulgent moment where you pride yourself on saving money on grocery by buying the family pack of maggie. It has ironed clothes and corporate cards instead of the grand illusion. Growing up is cowering, depending and losing and being ok with it. Growing up is folding a handkerchief with a dexterity that was up till now absent from your sleeves. As Eliot put it: "This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper"