How time changes us, in multiple, unexplainable ways! It is sad to see the Winona Ryder of today and wonder where has the innocent Winona of Reality Bites and How to Make an American Quilt gone. It is even more saddening to see Meg Ryan carrying a face done away with plastic surgeries, the innocent face of You’ve Got Mail no more visible. Nicole Kidman also not looking like the Satine of Moulin Rouge any longer. We are all fighting against time and age to retain our physical features. Definitely for the glam world this need is even direr.

Where the common woman would use age miracle creams to hide her wrinkles, these actresses would go for plastic surgeries to make the changes they desire more permanent.

Everyone has the right to look beautiful, and that as per their definitions. But are those definitions of beauty moulded and shaped in the matrix of societal values? And, is that beauty achieved at the price of losing your innocence within?

Of course, it does not mean that if you use age miracle creams then you are losing your innocence. But moulding your very bones according to the society’s definitions definitely leads towards losing your innocence.

It is a beautiful word, this ‘innocence.’ Children are innocent beings. They ask questions, they say beautifully simple things, they look at you lovingly only because you gave them a candy (well, that’s before consumerism kicks in in their little minds and they start harping for Barbie and Justin Bieber). It is an interesting question that how innocent is actually today’s child and till what age is that child free from the clutches of peer pressure. Undeniably, to retain your individuality is a nagging concern at all ages.

Innocence and naivety are so often confused that the line dividing them is forever blurring. The idea being that if you are naïve then somebody might dub you as innocent or vice versa. But what is actually naivety and innocence?

Innocence is simplicity. This undying need to do things as they come, to not to be pretentious because it appeals to the world. Naivety is when you are being stupid, when you lack the knowledge and sometimes you are even content with it.

Ignorance is bliss and you realise this when you have landed on the other side of the shore. On this other side you have become a solid, confident human being, without any trace of naivety left in your being. But then you look at that simple little child, those inquisitive eyes that were once entirely yours, and you realise that yes ignorance is bliss. That you inhabited a different realm when you knew so less. Pouring your heart out was not clichéd and uber-sentimental. It was you!

Priorities change as we grow older. There is always a car to fix, food to cook, someone out there to impress. It is sad that many of us stop living our lives and start living lives dictated by people around us or society at large. It is like murdering your innocence within. Sometimes, that, with your own hands or by someone else’s hands.

There are some beautiful lines written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. They go something like that:

"Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age

The child is grown, and puts away childish things.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies."

Not even your innocence.