i shall go back to blogging on the computer. blogging on the iphone is mobile but highly uncomfortable because i don't like the mini-touch-screen keyboard.

i've been wanting to blog about Toy Story 3, and i shall do it now. i must confess that i nearly cried at the end of the movie when Andy was playing with his toys with the little girl whose name i've forgotten. so sentimental right? the reason why i was pushing back tears was because the movie addressed a theme that i've been dealing with for some time now. which is about leaving behind your childhood and embracing a new chapter in life: adulthood. apparently, and rather obviously, Toy Story 3 was not made for the children of this generation, but rather for people of my generation, the late teen-early twenties set who would be old enough to remember Toy Story 1 and 2. clearly we were the intended audience. the jokes employed in the movie also were too "mature" for younger kids to get, like Ken's vanity, Barbie's bimboness, references to college, etc. so it was at the end of the movie when Andy was packing his stuff and ready to head off to college that i really understood what the movie was about.

the toys really represented his childhood, or rather they were symbolic of childhood, that sweet, innocent time of our lives where two hours seemed like a real long time, where cartoons were still funny, and it didn't take a dirty joke to make you laugh. Andy's heading off to college and subsequent packing of his toys were representative of how everyone has to come-of-age, the crossroads in our life when we choose to forget or leave behind our childish ways and step into the great unknown of adulthood. for some of us, that transition is easy, without fuss, almost natural. many people ease into adulthood and its subsequent vices, pleasures and pains that are so detached from childhood vices, pleasures and pains. but for others, like Andy, leaving behind that time of his life was an extremely difficult thing to do. his reluctance symbolic in his initial decision to keep all his toys in the attic, instead of throwing them away, bringing a picture of him and his toys as well as Woody, his favourite toy, with him to college. it showed he didn't really want to leave all that behind, that they were very much still a part of him and his identity and his dilemma in wanting to move on while still holding on to that very happy, carefree past.

i think i can identify with Andy in that sense. it doesn't help that being a youth leader, i am in constant contact with people who remind me of the glorious, carefree, innocent past. i rue lost innocence, how friends now talk about girlfriends, breakups, about the latest clubs and the difference between one and a pub and nightclub. i rue the fact that the main drink of parties and gatherings nowadays is not coke but coke mixed with vodka. i rue the passing of days when the advent of dusk meant time to go home for dinner, and any desire to stay out later would mean a call or sms back to ask the parents nicely. i find it weird that friends now drive to once far-flung or inconvenient-to-reach places rather than take the mrt and bus together. all those times, days of being a teenager, when you were testing the boundaries of your independence, exploring new places, new concepts, new ways of relating to people, suddenly all that new-ness, that exhilaration of discovering something new, that high of adventure of moulding and shaping your personality, your individuality becomes duller. that rush you got when you went to a place for the first time, met a friend for the first time, stayed out late for the first time becomes merely a stale wind, a been-there-done-that feeling.

i hate that growing older means having to be more responsible, and also means more freedoms. when you were young and still under your parents' control, right meant right and wrong meant you would like to try it when you were older or legal. more freedom means more grey areas, more having to make a stand for what you believe in and what you reject. more freedom means more nights out, more exposure to, among other things, booze, sex, vulgarities, drugs. more freedom means being able to do the things your parents told you not to and getting away with it. it means that you could no longer hide behind legalistic ramblings when you disapprove of something, when the very action or thought so grates against your soul that you choose not to do it even though you know full well that 'everyone else is doing the same thing, what'. more freedom means more choices and but not necessarily more responsibility for the consequences of making that choice. which is why i wanted to stay young, when you knew that buying alcohol meant breaking the law and i could easily deflect drinking, hiding behind age restrictions. but now it means that i really have to stand up against that. 

i think i am like Andy, that there will always be that part of me that will want to put my toys in the attic rather than throwing them all away so that someday, when i am most needy and lost, i can take them out and play with them again, to relive my glory teen years, or even childhood years before keeping them away again and stepping back into reality. toys take you away from reality, which can be so hard and unfeeling. reality strips away imagination, prevents you from escaping to an alternate dimension, where you are the boss of the world and you set your rules. reality forces you to conform to convention, in order to survive, reality mandates that you blend in, accept mindlessly the prevalent mode of thought, follow aimlessly along to the direction of the horde. being an adult, throwing your toys away, means stepping into reality, a world devoid of dreams, idealism and imagination. we can, and should, therefore, never really throw our toys away. we need to hold on to that part of us when we were still young, impressionable and easily excitable, lest we lose sense of what it means to dream, to imagine, to create and to experience. when we get sucked into the vortex of reality, we lose ourselves, we become a face in the crowd, but another person in a sea of human beings wandering aimlessly, lacking in direction. we need to be like Andy, playing with that little girl. we need to get in touch with that period of time when we had big dreams, when we wanted to be a rock star, an astronaut, a doctor, a comedian...when anything in the world seemed possible so long as you could dream it. we need to convince ourselves that it's okay to be a kid again, to laugh, to be excited, and above all, to experience everything with that same mix of excitement, eagerness and apprehension a child experiences all at the same time when he's doing something for the very first time. we need to pass on that youthful optimism and idealism to the next generation, to allow our juniors, younger brothers and sisters, our cousins, nieces and nephews and ultimately our children to play, to imagine and to dream.