There are some people in this world with whom we feel a unique bond of boundless affection, share an unflinching commitment and spend the most memorable time of our lives. They are someone to whom we are emotionally, biologically and genetically attached. We all grow up with them, often without realizing their significance and underestimating their worth. May be either we take them for granted or get used to see them a lot that we tend to forget what they mean to us. It's not that we are oblivious to knowing who they are and what they stand for but I guess we get so boggled up with our own lives that we just slide into the I-know-that attitude. So without further mumbling and jumbling of thoughts, I would like to reveal these people, who are none other than our own brothers and sisters. Well, we all should be grateful to God for giving us such great companions and bona fide confidants in the form of our siblings.
Today, I would take my readers to a nostalgic yet hysterical ride back to the days when we were young, naïve, short and scrawny, and carefree and careless. Well, if we glance back now, it doesn't seem like we have come such a long, long way together. I know all of us have such amazingly funny and insane memories of our childhood days. There are few things about our childhood that we all have in common and some habits are almost always universal. If I start mentioning those things, I don't think I would be able to wrap up soon, therefore let's start off with some very notable aspects of living with siblings mainly through three important phases. The first phase can be called the elementary phase, till the age of 12, we seem to cherish every single moment spent with our family, we learn everything for the first time, eating candies, cookies, and cakes, riding bicycles, flying kites, eager to finish homework as soon as possible, watching cartoon network, getting fascinated by magic shows, snapping fingers, stomping feet, playing hide and seek, trying to skate on marble floors, having fun in the mud all day and trying to sail our paper ships in the puddles of monsoon rain.
Next comes the secondary phase, when we set our feet in the teenage world, this is the "oh-my-God" era, we swear after every word, our hobbies change and our priorities pick up a perpetually altering pace. Our minds get stuck into unanswerable questions, we beg
in to incessantly fight over petty issues such as who will get the chicken leg piece, television's remote control ( we find it hilarious now but at that time our egos clashed), we yell and scream for nothing, we get emotional easily, we laugh at the crazy haircuts and seek for innovative fashion trends (usually going back twenty years), the kite flying passion turns into the big and ostentatious basant festival, cricket world cup, Waseem Akram's vogue, Lizzy McGuire's fan club, arguing over issues on which we have no control , the urge to follow novel passions emerges, the desire to try diverse things also surfaces furtively, sudden plethora of musical adventure arrives, meaningless crushes, the scolding and lashing by our parents, we listen to the lectures of how to gain a competitive edge over our cousins, and we witness our academic successes and failures. And yes the overly infamous question that all parents keep asking their children is what are our plans for the future, which many find it excruciatingly hard to answer while there are some who know exactly what to do with their lives.
The final and last phase usually involves having our own families, worrying about bills and pills, although I do not intend to paint a very sodden and forbidding picture of this stage but it is true that at this time we reflect back to what we have been through and miss our days of youth and innocence when we brothers and sisters used to live under one roof. Well, this is the phase which serves as an eye-opener to us because we come to value the importance of our siblings with whom we have seen the best and the worst. We come to realize what life is without them, and wish to turn back the clock where we can hear only the echoes of uncontrollable laughter and twittering giggles in the innocuous corridors of youth. Now when we think about our jerky ways and perky nature, we feel a sense of connectivity and familiarity with our past.
No matter how far we stay away from each other and how much we go ahead in lives, there is something about the beauty of friendship between siblings that seems to cultivate into a mature, ever-lasting relationship based on trust, love, respect and camaraderie. The spontaneity and genuineness that embodies this relationship is simply superb and has definitely no parallel. I wish all of us will keep loving our "annoying" brothers and "finicky" sisters because they are all beautiful just the way they are.
