We never really grow up, do we?

It's some botched-up case of Peter Pan syndrome. We remain children trapped in bodies that slowly warp and wrinkle, lost in a sea of white hair and age spots.

Sometimes we ask ourselves where the years have gone, and what's actually changed since we were truly young. The innocent doe-eyes are merely hidden behind opaque pupils, the smooth skin camouflaged by the leathery folds, the mischievous smile tucked in carefully between the lines and crevices. Somehow, somewhere, our childhood remains inside of us.

And what of our calm, placid, adult exteriors? What of our jobs, and our homes, and our friends, and our own children? What of the gradual shedding of our supple skin, of the burdens we learn to drag with us, of the heaviness we attribute to reality?

Inevitably, we lock our hot blood and our frenetic energy and our boundless ambition in the prison of expectations: the expectations of a society whose members have not grown up yet either; who never wanted to grow up; who got trapped in a world of responsibility and norms and pragmatism. We feel the strain, but we swallow the key and despair in silence.

Because this world is not a world for children.

This world is a world for greed and avarice and pride and sloth and lust and horror. A world for atrocities and insensibilities, for earthly possessions and money, for malevolence and cynicism and hate. A world none too kind to children; no, none too kind at all.