Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
In Ode: Intimations of Immortality, we are able to see how Wordsworth has a strong feeling about childhood. He says that children try to grow up so fast and he does not understand why would they want to grow up so quickly and begin the struggles that adults have to eventually face. In stanza 7, he says that children play pretend funeral and wedding. As we discussed this in class, I realized I used to do the same thing. As a child, I was always playing pretend cooking. Where I would get mud and rocks and pretended I was making mashed potatoes with meat. Others days, I would pretend I was a doctor and I would prescribe my patients (teddy bears) with pills (sweet tarts) for their terrible cough. I remember I wanted to grow up so bad and do all the "cool" things adults were able to do. Now, however, I realized growing up will not be as fun as I thought it would be when I was 5 years old. As children we are not able to see and appreciate how precious life is before we are faced with all of life's struggles. Therefore, I believe we should enjoy life instead of rushing everything we do, rather just sit back and enjoy an episode of Spongebob Squarepants.
I think it's a societal thing. America doesn't allow kids to just be kids. Schools and parents raise their children to be mature at a young age. God forbid a child steps out of that circle of conformity. They'll start diagnosing the child with attention disorders when in actuality, it's just a child wanting to be a child. I feel like I've missed about on being a teenager, too, because a majority of my teenage life has been me preparing for adulthood and planning my future.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Tahis! :) I agree with you. As a kid, I grew up so fast! I feel like it's all a cycle though. As a kid, I wanted to be a teenager. As a teenager, although I am 18, I now want to be a full blown adult. Like Hilda said, being a teenager sucks. It's all "do this, do that or you won't get into college blah blah blah" and while school is important there are other things I feel like I missed out on growing up. Every thing we do is for the future then people wonder why we can't just live in the moment and enjoy our youth??? Because we simply CANT. We have been prepared to be housewives from the day we were born. Since the day we stepped into school, it's been preparation for the workfield. Don't get me wrong, education is a beautiful thing, but the system has taken all of the passion out of it. There's just no way out the system. Nowadays people go to school just to get an okay job, not for the "search for enlightenment." Tahis you're so right, our lives are rushed, not only by ourselves but also by society's expectations!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree Tahis. When I was younger I had toys that made me feel like I was a grown up, from baby dolls to the little tikes kitchen set. Apparently I had planned to be a house wife (lol soooo not for me). We never truly had time to actually be kids. Like Myriam said, the toys we had when we were younger molded us to become housewives and to be nurturing mothers. We were trained to do our work since preschool and was later taught that school was the only way we would make it in the real world. It's been drilled into my head since middle school that college is the only way to go so I won't be a failure in my adult life. Kids now-a-days do not even go outside to play anymore. They play video games and barely have time to use their imagination like how we used to too create new games to play with other children. Our lives were planned since our birth and we had to follow all of the rules. Sure, we were ignorant at the time and I guess you can say it was blissful because we didn't know how cruel the system is. Now that we know, we see how it is to really grow up. It's a hard process trying to adjust. We have to pay bills, live on our own, go to a college and obtain a degree in a field that you might not even like anymore. It's hard but I guess we have to do it right? We never got to be a child and I find that really sad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! Now that we are at the tip of touching the street of adulthood, I am getting scared and apart of me is just wishing that it was all just pretend. When you are younger, when your mom tells you to go into another room this is adult business, and you are so anxious to be in there with mommy. Not acknowledging Mommy has serious bills due. I think we can all agree that having no cares in the world was the best! Now the world is transitioning into adulthood. Children are now birthing and taken care of children. The imagination of society's children has been stolen, and children are not playing hide and seek, they are now playing house and getting ready for bills at the age of one...deep revelation *drops computer*
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree. As a child I too used to pretend to be a doctor. As children it seems like an instinct to act out everything we see. And we begin to pretend to be adults, unknowingly taking away the enjoyment of just being a kid. We start to want to be adults and do what adults do. Especially in our generation where people tend to grow up so fast at a young age. It just doesn't seem to be normal to just enjoy childhood anymore.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your blog Tahis ! Wordsworth created a view where we had to step back and think like . . . " what is the rush?" It is so true that we as children rush to grow up and begin our adult life but at the same time some of us are sometimes forced. For example being the elder daughter and my father being the only parent was a situation where I knew I was going to be forced to grow up quickly due to family customs. However Wordsworth makes a great point that we should not rush but instead enjoy the treasures of life a step at a time.
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