Go play.

I am almost 25 (not there yet!) and I am nowhere close to becoming a parent, but I want to pen down my thoughts about parenting and being parents, before I get blinded by the overwhelming experience of having a child. I think having a child changes you in ways that you can never imagine- that is a clichéd line, but clichés are so true! So before I get ‘converted’ into Motherhood, I want to record all my thoughts and feelings looking at it from a distant unbiased platform. As soon as I have a child, I know, I will be allured by the antics of the little one, to even consider any of the opinions I am going to write down here. But, I want to remember what is in my mind right now, so that I can look back at it in the future. Perhaps, derive something out of this ‘gyaan’ of a naïve 24 year old.

What I am going to write now, is like an open letter to all parents, from a child’s perspective. And I write this at a juncture of my life, when I have experienced both sides of it- being a child, and being an adult (having looked at things from a parent's perspective). Having an adorable niece also contributes into this ‘holistic’ experience.

Being a parent is the toughest job description on earth. Being a good parent is even more difficult. I look at life as a game, there are so many characters, and every phase of life is a ‘level’, and difficulty level at each stage keeps on increasing. So while you do need to keep collecting ‘points’, another important part of this game is to keep going forward, without dying. Protecting yourself from the beasts that show up in the game. There are always life lines / weapons / potions (depending upon how lucky you are in life) but at the end of it all, you have to keep moving forward. If you want to collect all the points that show up on the way, you will never move forward. Ofcourse, you will move forward, but slowly. Who wins in the end? The one who has collected maximum points. Instead of collecting all of them in every level, keep going up the ladder, experience all the levels and collect points on the way. You would have more points ultimately. Aren’t the points of higher value in higher levels?

Now, when you have a baby, your life game reboots. You start all over again. You remember all the obstacles, all the beasts. You know where the potion is hidden, you know which one is a deceptive potion, you know where to collect the weapons from. You are excited coz you have done it all. And now you want to ‘guide’ your baby so that he doesn’t make mistakes. But you know what? When the game was rebooted, there were a lot of ‘app updates’ . . . it is not exactly the same game anymore. Ofcourse, the pattern is same. But it is ‘new and improved’. So while you are telling your baby how to play his game, there are a lot of points he is missing on- the points that are hidden somewhere else. Yes, there might be some beasts there, but he has weapons and potions, right? So when you guide him to the path that you had taken, grabbing all those golden, silver, platinum points, trying to score the highest score, you are making him miss the new nuggets that are added in the game.

Let him play his game!

Now, that sounds easy. But I understand it isn’t. What scares me at this moment about being a parent is having this huge responsibility of how that person who, by the way, looks like you and sometimes acts like you, turns out to become. I don’t know how I am turning out to be, and whether I am doing it right, taking responsibility of somebody else’s life . . . is way out of the league. And that is where, everything gets messed up. The need, the paranoia of doing it right. ‘The right upbringing’. That is the burden under which all parents mess up their life. They try to hold themselves accountable for everything their kid does. They want to be perfect and raise perfect kids.

But now, being a child, let me tell you one thing, very honestly. You can never be perfect parents. However you try to be ‘friendly’, ‘open minded’, ‘liberal’ . . . your kids are always going to be unhappy with you. They will have grievances and qualms, irrespective of whether you gave in to all their demands, or were strict and a disciplinarian. But in the middle of all this, there will be spurts of unexpected joys (that will melt your heart, you will be in a spell, but don’t be fooled), mostly during the early stages of their life. After that, it is downhill, believe me, until they become old enough to become parents themselves. Oh and all the sacrifices you make is part of the job description of this thankless job. The retirement plan, may be sweet (there is hope!) if you have done your job well. Wait for the fruits.

So what I want to remind myself here, before I become a parent, is that being a parent is really difficult. Don’t stop playing your game. Their game is part of your game. Like Inception. Dream within a dream. Haha. While your life revolves around them, I understand, don’t stop playing your game. That is the only advice I want to give my older self, when I become a parent. Be scared, be worried, be concerned, but play your game and let them play theirs.