I was never happier than when I was stupid

Strange how when you are young, you want to grow old, and when you are old you try to stay young. I am past that peak now, after struggling for two decades to grow up, I find myself futilely trying to stop the slide which would bring me back to inability.

Retrospectively, I never actually felt a peak like the one I attempted to demonstrate with this diagram. There wasn't an actual morning when I realized that yesterday was the best day of my life and today is the beginning of the end. It happens in stages, just like any dilapidating terminal disease. Suddenly, you fail your first 2.4km run (got to make it in some timing to pass) and you think that it is some other person who has actually attained a gold standard in that same physical test. Next, you had to stop playing basketball because you were actually tired, not because they shut off the lights for the basketball courts. Finally, some young 'un comes along and ask you for advice because you are wise/smart.

I was never happier than when I was stupid. And like youth, its something you can't really get back. My only hope in reviving that carefree innocence would be in senility and that is a sad thing to aim for. Days when you didn't have to worry about the future, about studying or doing what is important, just because it wasn't fun. And everything that is fun, is all that occupies your time and mind. Homework, tests, exams are irritants, not something to get nervous about (results are more important). Studying is the time you hold a book in your face and dream about all the fun things you can do later. Friends are true friends because like you, they don't think, they react and act. You could trust that friend to cry or get angry at you and display emotions freely, and they expect the same from you. The only friendships were honest. You didn't need any other types of friendship.

I used to think "Flowers For Algernon" was a sad story, now poised in the leeward side of life. It is a romantic fantasy.