From our very childhood, we are told stories about the heroes of our nation. Some of the stories are of mythological origin or fantastic works of fiction while others are accounts of our real life idols. But no matter which category the story belongs to, the one common trait between them is the motive with which they are told. The motive is to instil a sense of pride in us of our pasts, acquaint us with our own historical background-sometimes as Indians and sometimes as humans, and finally, to inspire us for our futures.
Thus, a portion of our upbringing is rooted in the shadows of some of the greatest women and men, who deviated from the complacent mediocrity, swam against the tide and made differences which were inconceivable during their time and age. And being impressionable by virtue of being children, we lap it all up. We start to dream, find a hunger of doing what is good, of making a difference, standing up for what is right, and also standing up for what truly gives us pleasure, our individuality. With time this hunger grows, our dreams become bigger and our individuality begins to take shape, but this is where society suddenly changes its tune.
All the tales of bravado and inspiration, on whose steady diet we had been reared for so long, seem meaningless, when in every sphere of our lives we are instructed to follow the masses. If you speak of education – you must take up science or you will be labelled as the family idiot, if you speak of career choices- unless you are able to squeeze into the already flooded pool of ‘engineers’ and ‘doctors’ you are deemed to be worthless, if you must be an athlete – choose cricket or you are screwed, and your personal life- Get a job, get married and have kids before you hit thirty. This way our entire lives are moulded according to the perpetuated mass trends, and we are instructed to dutifully follow them.
But what is the outcome of this meaningless practice? Who really benefits from it? All we get are generation after generation of disgruntled, dissatisfied and unhappy people. Born and bred to dream and shine, suddenly we are pushed into a mad rush to be uniform and blend in with the milieu. By muffling all that which is good and different in us, not only are we turned into a dissatisfied and depressed lot, and thus negatively affect our personal lives, but our society also suffers.
Take for example our societal norms regarding who should study what – If your board results are good then you ‘must’ choose science, if you have scored average –commerce, and humanities is the mother of the rag tag bunch of those unfortunate lots whose parents are ‘unable to met the eyes of their relatives because of their ward’s board exam result’. You won’t b asked what your choice stream of education is, no one will even take the time to see which subjects you have scored best in your board exams. Thus even if you have scored high because of humanities you will be expected and often coerced (passively/actively) to enrol in science, on the other hand, if you have scored poorly because of your humanities subject, you will be pushed into humanities, just because your aggregate is low. Thus, pretty much the rest of your academic life will be based on uninformed, unsound decisions dictated by equally unsound social conventions.
And the outcome of such misappropriation and misdirection of talents is that, some of the best writers of our generation fade away into anonymity while punching data into the company system, those who could have been the greatest innovators of their age sit at some low rewarding and abysmally paying government job somewhere (because graduating in an Arts subject limits your option to such jobs only, apparently); an athlete who could have represented the nation in Olympics is pushed into playing cricket till he gives up all sports out of sheer discontent, and an artist suppresses all her creativity to be expressed only as doodles at the back of her copy. All in all, another generation of lost talents and dissatisfaction is let out into the world, and then most of this generation perpetuate the pattern by trying to live their dreams through their children, irrespective of the choices of the latter, thus the cycle continues.
This pattern of blending in the background has another offshoot- every time there is an accident on road, someone being harassed or wronged in some way, someone in dire need of help, an animal being abused or needing to be rescued, in short, someone in need of help, the first thing we are told by our loved ones is that, to not get involved in it. Sure, we understand that as our loved ones it is in their nature to be worried about us, and care for our security, but such a mindset in the long run also creates an entire population of passive bystanders, who are perpetually skittish, never stand up for a cause, and thus never act as responsible citizens.
So isn’t it high time that this fascination with mediocrity and uniformity be given up by our society? It is high time we stop emulating herds of cattle and dare to be our own person, for life is too short to dance to someone else’s beat. Sure there will be difficulties, as nothing worth doing or having is easy, but we have to remember that even failing at our terms is much better than succeeding at someone else’s.
