Of many things that are forgotten, left behind and lost in the process of growing up (the continuous process and not just the transition toward adulthood), it is the ease that I miss most. The sort of simplicity with which everything seemed to pass me by, when everything was divisible into simple choices and I did not have to waste time deciding on lines of ‘may be’. A lunch with your uncle and aunt was just a lunch, not something that had to be done for the sake of maintaining the extended family relations. That was when spontaneous laughter did not have any other meaning and being happy did not require any motive. I was not a child back then. I was seventeen. I don’t know, maybe in hindsight the grass has started to look greener to me despite the fact that I was more stupid back then than I am today. I’m 22. I don’t act like it nor does it reflect from my words or actions. My maturity levels (the ones acceptable to my parents, obviously, not responsible drinking habits.) last for about 12 hours max and then I’m back to square one. The only thing I could count on is my moral compass. Unlike some, I do not shove it under other’s noses. That’s one thing that I can include in my definition of integrity.

Live and let live.

Social experiment. The abovementioned line will be affirmed by majority but followed by few. That’s how it is. There is always someone out there breaking the social contract. Not that there aren’t people who actually respect and reciprocate your good intentions by giving you privacy. If you do find a set of people like that consider yourself the luckiest in the world. I felt lucky for a while. And then the only fiction I ever created in the face of reality was in form of pretense. Definitely not lies. Pure pretense.