We are born in this world without an inkling on what’s what. At every stage of our lives, we were taught things by our parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles. Instilled in us are beliefs and values, most of which we wholeheartedly believed and trusted.
Early Days of our Childhood
As we walk through our Childhood, we come to realize things and start thinking for ourselves. A trusting heart, yet experienced broken promises and at times neglected, but we still decided to believe and trust. Our grandparents often told us stories of their golden days, sometimes exaggerated to add more spice to a boring and mundane story. Nevertheless, as innocent as we were, we believed every word of it, urging our storytellers to tell us more. We then played and tried to impersonate and embody the heroes of those stories, believing that justice will always win, and that the light will always triumph over darkness. Whenever we try to remember those days now, it feels so far off in the past. We chuckle and realize how crazy we were back then, saying those were the days we wished to go back to; innocent, carefree, full of ambition, and most of all, happy.
The Independence of Adolescence
On towards our Adolescent years, we gained our freedom to choose independently. The beliefs that we have since our childhood are almost all gone. Though religion plays a vital role in keeping most of our values and beliefs, not everyone is religious. Oftentimes we carry and stick to our values as well as our spiritual beliefs as we progress through life. At this stage, we as human beings and as part of society would meet new people. Our circumstances and interactions would then dictate how we would be molded. Most of us are heavily affected by our lifestyle, friends, colleagues, and work life, which determines our values and beliefs. At times we get smitten with the notion of how others have lived their lives and sometimes incorporate their practices as our own. The only thing capable of destroying our sense of values is a life changing experience that most of us don’t experience.
The Never Ending Cycle of Adulthood
As we move on to our Adulthood, some of us have become full-fledged adults and have gone through a lot, while some are still lost and conflicted. Most of us now have families of our own, ready to impart values and beliefs to the next generation. Passing the baton to carry on the values and beliefs that through all of our life’s experiences, deemed to be practical, useful, and important. At this stage in our lives, we learned and experienced a lot, teaching us that not everything we were told in our childhood was true and applicable, still some of those were important and some just disregarded them, learning life the hard way.