Here's my belated entry:
As I kid, I dreamt a lot. I wanted to one day take the world by the scruff of the neck and help make it a better place. I wanted to make a change. I wanted to help make it equal, help take away all the evils, all the poverty, all the hunger and all unnecessary disease. One minute, I'd dream of leading a revolution that would replace all the evils that I saw in the world with something better, something more leftist and egalitarian. The next, I'd dream of leading a counter-culture, that was so overwhelming and brilliant and so touched by genius that everyone would be forced to sit up, take note of it's brilliance and thus the error of their ways, and start to make a positive change... Throughout it all, I wanted to grow into a good man, an honest one, a loyal one, a caring one that acts as an example to others around me. I wanted to positively touch everyone that I met, and to be thought of and remembered well by all of them.
I find myself now married, with a child that never seems to sleep, and a wife that never ever shuts up. The revolution has been forgotten. I've accepted evil and inequality and unnecessary suffering, and save for the occasional burst of anger, spare it little thought. I have accepted that I am not a leader, that I'm unable to inspire a five year old, let alone an entire counter-culture. I have accepted that I cannot be honest even to the person that I have sworn an oath to love, honour and obey. I have accepted that I occasionally have the ability and the heart to love more than one person at once, and this sits hypocritically with the fact that I expect complete and utter loyalty and fidelity from all the partners that I have ever taken in life.
I have also now accepted that we do not live on a level playing field, and I have wholeheartedly joined in with the game without trying to change the rules of the sport. I have moved away from the poor neighborhood that I was born in, in order to give my child a better school and a better start in life. I have given very little consideration to the children who are still left to grow up on the estate I've left, and I have even started looking at their parents through the eyes of a snob who is silently proud not to be in their shoes. I have also developed an ability to feel very little for the homeless man I pass every day on my way into my fancy office, with a coffee in my hand that would pay for an entire day's food for him. I have stopped caring for hungry children in Africa, for single-mothers that have been abandoned by the state, for poor sufferers of diseases for which we have had cures for years. I have stopped caring that many people and their children are caught up in a vicious circle of poverty and underachievement, because I have grown content to have become part of the circle of privilege, and my children and theirs will be ok from now on in.
I don't know exactly when I crossed the line, but I've somehow turned into the man I've always hated.
Who's to say that you would've hated this man if you tried to know him?
Topic: As a kid...