Innocence In Despair!!

In the Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy, I remember reading a part wherein the rabbit Oleg Ivanovich looking at his daughter thinks," Why, then, do children try so hard to grow up and leave their innocence behind?". On reading that sentence I started thinking on the same, why is that when we were children, we were overflowing with Innocence and when grown up we try to be more mature with less innocence. Is it wrong to be filled with the same kind of innocence as one had in his/her childhood ??

Once when we were in our childhood days(I am referring to the current generation of 20s and mid-20s), we were protected from all the ill-happenings of the world, we were protected as if we were rare diamonds by our families. The environment we grew up was that of a protected one I would say, because of the constraints that were around us.

It was in those times that most of our mothers were taking up the roles of home-makers and one of the major roles played in it was that to take care of one's children and also to protect the same from all the ills of the world. Our world was that of being around our mothers and fathers, thereby having no clue on the other happenings .We were dropped and picked up from our playschools by our mothers. We were subjected to excessive petting, thereby living a desired life. The same trend continued to our schooling.

When I was in High School, I could see mothers picking up their beloved daughters, in some extreme cases were some guys. The parents even had their say in selecting the friends for their daughters/sons citing various reasons for the same. When scrutinizing further, those girls and guys were the ones who were very innocent even for that age. By doing that, the life of those souls were being limited to the walls of their house and that of the schools. It was these boundaries put forth by the parents that has maintained the same level of innocence in them.

Those people feel that the life they have been living is an instance of an utopian life. But that’s not the fact, such a life in fact makes the person not able to think beyond a world without his/her parents. Such life makes it difficult for any person to survive in this competitive world. I feel pity for those souls. In that matter I thank my parents for loosening the grip on me when I was doing my schooling, thereby allowing me to get an idea as to what the world looked like.

The level of innocence does come down in a person depending on the level of exposure one has got in this world. Higher the exposure, lower is the level of innocence in the person. In this competitive world, I feel that higher the level of innocence in a person can be disadvantageous as people for sure would take them for a ride and leave them behind while those people surge forward without caring. Such is the scenario now in this world, full of schemers and manipulators, there are people waiting to pounce on the innocence of people.

Innocence can be instrumental in shaping up the character of a person along with various other traits which begin to ingrain itself in one's character; but it should not override the other traits that are also vital.

Coming to the question I posed earlier, it is not wrong to be filled with innocence in oneself. Innocence in a person is a trait that most of the people related to that person love the most, it is cruel to take advantage of the same to gain some materialistic petty things in life; such an act is almost equivalent to blasphemy!!