Makes me wonder

16th July 2022

Has it ever happened that one fine morning you woke up to a memory of an incident that took place years or decades ago?

It happened to me recently. I don’t know what triggered that memory, nor am I sure if I remember the details correctly. But I so vividly remember how I felt. Because it is so deeply engraved in my heart.

Here it goes.

I would be around 8 years old and was riding a bicycle in my neighborhood one day.

While I was riding, I got too close to a girl who was playing on the ground. The girl was my age. I kind of lost my balance and was about to dash into her, but I somehow managed and gained my balance back.

After I was done riding, I parked my bicycle and was going home. Right then, a friend of mine told me that my bicycle had scratched the girl just above her right eye and that she was crying and bleeding a lot.

That’s when I went cold feet.

I started thinking this was the end of my childhood. Teary eyed. The irrational chain of thoughts took off. The girl’s parent will come and hit me for doing this to their daughter. My parents will hate me and never talk to me again (I was only 8 okay).

Gathering all the energy, I went home. In few minutes, the doorbell rang. I still remember the anxiety attack I had at that time.

That girl was standing there with her mother. She had a band-aid above her eye. I apologised and started crying.

I was prepared to be scolded very badly in front of everyone. Then something completely unexpected happened.

That girl’s mother replied “It is completely alright, beta. You get hurt when you’re playing, it is normal. I just came by to let you know that Alia is fine, so that you don’t worry”

One thousand pound of weight was taken off my tiny shoulders when I heard those words.

I had almost gone to the jail in my head and here this lady was telling me that she understands this is normal? I was not going to be hit or scolded? I was overthinking, getting anxious, getting scared for nothing?

It has been two decades after that episode.

As a person, I have turned out to be very calm. I don’t overthink much or take stress in mere anticipation of things, which also gets reflected in the performance. Of course, there are times when I am an exception to this and fall into an endless abyss of overthinking. But that is comparatively rare.

When I woke up one morning with this memory, it suddenly made me think if I had more childhood experiences that made me this person? For that one time clearly made me understand how overthinking about what will happen in the future does not serve any purpose.

I know this story doesn’t sound like much. It is a mere needle in the haystack of my childhood experiences. But the fact that it is one of the few stories that I remember as a child, hints that it must have been a contributing factor in making me who I am.  

It is well established how our childhood experiences shape our personalities. We, as adult, are products of what happened around us as a child. It has also been proven scientifically that the experiences children have early in life, play a crucial role in the development of the brain. Of course, we keep learning and adapting our personality even in adulthood, but our childhood experiences are very determinative for what we become.

Makes me wonder how different many of us would have been, had we had that one understanding person who did not shout at us for our mistake as a child? Nonetheless, can we be that person in someone else’s life?

-Sanketa Raut

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