Carefree

With the new semester comes some of the things that I had to bear throughout the duration of the old semester, including the weekly IVCF executive meeting, that now happens to be on a Tuesday. February in Trinidad and Tobago is Carnival month, and no not a carnival with fun rides and clowns. Carnival as in a bunch of people in extremely revealing outfits jumping up and down in the streets, dancing with each other. Yeah, that's what it is. I've personally never been a fan of Carnival. Too much revelry for my tastes. But the one thing that accompanies Carnival that I do like, is the steel drums, or as we call them in Trinidad, the steelpan.

On my way home there is a band camp that practices the steelpan every night up until Carnival Monday and Tuesday (which is in March this year). The steelpan is a pretty loud instrument so it can be heard from some distance away. While waiting in the car for my sister, my attention was drawn to a little girl across the street. She was about six years old, or probably even younger. She was standing at the front an appliance dancing to the sound of the drums. It was probably the happiest dance that you'd ever see, the kind of dance they feature in movies when the characters find themselves in the middle of a field of flowers. It didn't matter what you were feeling the moment before, your heart would have just been filled with joy.

Then something else caught my attention. The fact that she was still in her school uniform. Here was a little girl, who had most likely been sent of to school at probably seven in the morning was here, nine at night, still wearing her uniform, meaning, most likely, that she was yet to get home. Yet to find time to relax from a full day of school and having to wait for her parents, who were probably working at the store to get home. And here she was, dancing with all the joy she could possibly muster, her shoulders not bearing a hint of a burden, displaying carefree innocence. Here I was, supposedly older and wiser than her, and I was stressed and tired. Granted, maybe I had more to do today than she did, but our burdens are always proportional.

Right there and then, I wanted to be a child, just for a second, so that I could remember how to be that happy. That I could remember how to be carefree and just for a couple minutes, dance as if I were the only one in the world, so that I could keep it in my adult life and carry with me, so that I would never have to be sad or angry or stressed again. Maybe as we grow up, we learn more things worth knowing, but it's important that we don't forget the thing we already do know, because one day, we'd wish that we still had them.