Cruelty is the Human Condition

Cruelty is the Human Condition

R. M. Suarius-Heilig

Of all the questions with which children are usually bombarded, one stands out as the cruellest and universally asked one; what do you want to be when you grow up?

The parents or relatives wait as the little ones roll their cute tiny eyes scouring their barely formed brains for an answer to the question of whom they would like to be in a mind-boggling future when they still have not properly grasped the concept of time. Their answers - or ours, as we have all been asked this question at some point in our childhood - shows how the world is simple through the optic of a child devoid of the anguish inherent to the adult life; I want to be happy.

Given that happiness is the most ephemeral human feeling, the inquisitor tends to be rather curious about the child concept of happiness, which in turn prompts the most hilarious fits of laughter. It is interesting to realise that the answers to those questions do not change much throughout the decades and what children understand as happiness is oftentimes tied down to pizza for lunch, ice-cream for dinner, no pre-established bedtime in concordance with unlimited television time, no adult supervision, pets with free access to the house and to our beds, no salad, nothing green on the plate that is not lemon jelly and definitely no vegetables.

What the little ones’ brains cannot concatenate is that what they understand as happiness is actually some sort of wild freedom. We come into this world devoid of beliefs, customs, malice and prejudice. Imbued with the courage to run stark naked down the street in the rain with a towel for a cape and a pair of yellow wellies shouting - I am the king, as your mother runs after you and the neighbour kids watch gaping through their windows probably thinking - he actually did it.

As insubordinate freedom is the essence of the child, it enables them to understand life in its simplest and as a consequence, to live in accordance with such simplicity. The more we assimilate all the rules and demands of the adult life, the more we distance ourselves from other people and what is actually essential in life. On the other hand, the ones who now sit alone in a pub with a heavy mind were once the same ones who could not find any reason not to be best friends with the new kid who had just moved to the house next door. However, that rather harmless question has robbed us of our innocence and got us far too busy to live.