The Age of Innocence

At what point do we stop becoming innocent?

A sundrenched winter’s evening, a long walk, and a conversation with a friend. All a prelude to think about things you would never cast an eye towards. A prelude to ponder a weird question which might seem obvious to many. When does a human stop becoming innocent?

Many factors come into play. Childhood, parents’ influences, other children, friends, school, college, books read, miles travelled, goals achieved, lives built, passions embraced by a lover or scorned with abhorrence, goals met or crumbled in the crucible of failure. An experience that reinforces our own preexisting dispositions with cornucopia.

Or crumbles them, tearing down the many tendons of intent, anticipation, and choking the very arteries of hope, leaving one to languish in fear, hatred, and the jaded sense of being wronged.

I wonder if a human’s disposition of innocence affects how he/she perceives art. This germ of thought came in the middle of a conversation with an esteemed poet when we were discussing the ‘open-mindedness’ of children.

I have often been told in candid conversations by people I respect, that I am woven too tight. And it is difficult to untangle anything I say and am. I have often been accused of being ‘unreadable’, which I have found to be of advantage at times, and other times, people have just not paid enough attention (good for me). Some of my actions have led to people building stories around the things I do. All I have done is to let these permeate. I have sensed admiration, respect, scepticism, hatred, and spite from the many people I have interacted in this short life of mine.

I often get questioned whether I was in a dark place when I got into death metal. While there is no definitive answer to that question, I listen, enjoy, and play death metal merely for its speed, tenacity, and the sheer precision of it.

All this pondering and continued conversation resulted in me going down a strange path of contemplation, the basis for which I do not know. These aren’t mind-bending techniques of enlightenment but these are abstract musings, bordering on mindless semantics. The barrage of questions and answers did little to quell this fire of uncertainty like the following:

I am just curious about at what point do we stop becoming innocent. Should the end of innocence always have to be associated with an activity we define as villainous, wicked, or against our preexisting disposition of “good”? At what point do we stop becoming innocent? I am not interested in why as much as I am in when.

Is innocence only with regard to deeds? Or is innocence a predisposition which lets us absorb more, interact more. Yes, almost all are naturally innocent as a child. But at what point do they stop being so? So, does experience makes them lose innocence? I know there are many things like the kind of environment he/she grows with, the kind of people they interact, all matter.

But the deeper you go into these, the more it becomes an argument over semantics. In the end, definitions of all things devolve into synonyms of one another.

It is at this point, my friend turns on a light bulb in my brain by saying:

Humans search for structure end of the day.

And there is one potential Eureka right there! At least for a Sunday evening, before dinner.

I think the day we start searching for familiar structures and frameworks is the day we slowly stop innocence. So, that would be inversely proportional? I don’t know if that is the right term (I am bad in maths).

Finally, if you have to choose between intelligence and innocence what would you choose?

For it is a paradox, is it not? Innocence will give me intelligence but I may not live long enough to experience it. Intelligence will keep me safe but I will no longer be able to experience the joy that comes with learning that something might happen exactly the way we perceive it to be.

There’s another eureka moment there!

When things don’t go as planned or perceived or according to a preexisting mental template, do we lose innocence? How would you define the scope and scale of innocence? And what would you choose if you had to choose between intelligence and innocence?

Special thanks to Neelima for an enlightening conversation.