Till.... the life is too short is my latest article at fuchha, please do rate it, share it,and any constructive feedback
is most welcome. ENJOY!!!
Did you ever wish for a terminal ailment? ……
I don’t really need to, but I will, remind you that our country is a land which is home to over 1.2 billion people. In a way it could be said that this is a place with largest number of people who could,potentially,exercise free will (China not being a democracy and all). People, who could follow their dreams and aspirations and make something out of themselves (and hopefully the country). People who can reach for the stars if they really wanted to. But, can they?
I am not an authority on whether they can or they can’t. But I can definitely point out that very few actually do. Why? To explain this I’ll need a for instance.Take a typical boy form an Indian middle class family and happens to be a wonderful artist. He finally joins an art school. You might say that he is following his dream. That’s because you’ve missed the subtext. He finally joined the art school yes, but there is a very good chance it wasn’t his first choice despite his obvious talents. How can that be? Simple really, a middle class boy has to become a professional, such as an engineer, and only on failing to achieve that goal he is forced to choose a field that he is familiar with. Now is he really going to show his true potential when every moment in that place, where he is actually meant to be, is a reminder of his failure and that he is not good enough to be where people who had high hopes for him wanted to see him. Trust me if he ever forgets the society will, generously, remind him of his crimes.
All of us have partaken in discussion(s) where the theme is – why the hell our country, with its monstrous population, not leading across all fields. This discussion usually becomes more engaging when it is around sports, and the favorite one being football. Eleven players running behind a ball, we should own that sport. Then why don’t we? Simply because every talented prospect is not brought up on dribbling drills rather on statements such as “ye ball me laat hi marega to bade ho kar kya karega” (if you’ll just kick the ball around what will you do when you grow up), and of course “football se ghar nahin chalta” (you can’t run a family by playing football). Do I need say more? We are very good at making people realize that talents in anything apart from academics and, thanks to IPL, cricket are a only to be developed as hobbies if we are forgiving.The blunt and more common version is that they are a waste of time and energy since they might be insufficient in terms of sustenance.
Recently, I read several articles almost exclusively on people who discarded what the people thought they should do and chose what they knew all along they could do. But strangely most of them come under one of the following categories – those who suffered and later succumbed, those who suffered and prevailed and those who witnessed the first two.
Now coming back to the question I started with (I apologize if I mislead you, and yes even I think it is a little extreme but – what the hell).Contrary to what your initial opinion might have been, it was meant to point out the relevance of life and living it. Very few are able to break the shackles that are placed upon us by the society. The best and the worst part is that only the individual can take them off, nobody else. And usually it isn’t until the individual realizes that the life is too short to be lived by the expectations of your neighbours (and sometimes the family) that he/she starts to put some effort in this regard. But the real question is how long will it take you?
