At cross roads

After a long long hiatus, I’m back, back with something profound and deep. It’s something that I believe needs everyone to ponder on to really realize the power of the idea.

So, finally I’m done with my formal education (I say formal because I believe education happens throughout your life). With two decades of education (14 years of schooling, 4 years of graduation and 2 years of post graduation) behind me I still find myself at crossroads. Maybe it’s an assumption that I am making, but I believe that our generation is struck between two worlds. One is the world that belonged to our parents and one is a world that could be ours that we ‘think’ we want.

My generation is programmed to achieve, to compete, to on the top and being second is just not good enough. The focus for us is education from good schools and college which will lead to good money, growth etc. But are we missing out on LIFE instead? Are we focused only on our work? How about a day just to contemplate on how life is? How about reading that book that could change the way you perceive the world? How about a fun evening with the street kids that made you go back to your childhood? What about those lovely summer vacations you took to your grandparents place? How much money/ growth do you think you need to have to get that summer break to you grandparent’s house? Haven’t we somewhere lost the purpose of it all?

Possibly it’s a phenomenon that not just the generation but the whole country is suffering. ‘Growth’ is the buzz word. But are we considering growth to be holistic and complete or are we just looking at the growth in a superficial sense. When we focus so much on growing an achieving are we really being holistic in our approach. Do we give equal importance to having a family and work? Are we as a country considering growth only as a something that is seen in GDP numbers or in terms of how safe our country is or how happy the country is?

We came up with the most important number ‘0’ and now our life is all about numbers. How good a kid is depends on the numbers in his report card, how well a person is doing depends on the numbers in his paycheck, how successful a person is depends on how many ‘years’ he took to get there, how good a product is depends on how costly it is… its numbers numbers numbers everywhere!!!

The reason I draw a parallel between the society and self is because I believe for a transformation to happen, it needs to start from the self. From self to the society – is the way to go. So maybe if each one of us makes an effort to be more holistic in our approach… we can together impact the way the society functions. So I guess it will be our generation that is struck at these crossroads, that has to take the decision, that has to give a direction for generations to come. But why me? Why do we have to take the call? Because fortunately we have been exposed to both these extremes and we are the only generation that can envision where each of these paths will eventually take us.