This is a question we all have been posed in our early childhood. Early childhood was when we had no idea of what the world was like and all we knew was that Popeye who ate spinach to give him strength to beat up Bluto who was more than double his size was cool. That the hero who beats up a villain and millions of the villain’s sidekicks was macho. So, if the hero was a truck driver we wanted to be one. Popeye was a sailor so we wanted to be a sailor. We laugh out loud at the innocence of a child who proudly declares that he wants to be a bus conductor when he grows up without realizing that it was the innocence in us that allowed us to pose such a question. It is ironic that when no one really knows what one wants to be, they are asked a million times by everybody regarding what they will grow up to be but, when you grow big enough to make such a decision nobody is bothered because the entire world has already decided what you should be.
In this process we never realize what we truly want to be, what is our true calling. We are never encouraged to find out the answer. There is not so much time. IIT and Medical special coaching is started at class 5 itself. Your parents want you to be a doctor because they think they did not have a chance to be one and you are their chance to fulfill their unfulfilled dream. By the time you reach class 10 you realize that doctor is the last thing you want to be but, sorry son too late. 5 years of special coaching later you cannot say so. Especially with so much money spent on you.
So you slog and become a doctor when you wanted to be someone else. You don’t complain either as the money is good. All you care about now is money. Why? Because you have been told time and again, directly and indirectly that money is all we need.
Now, you have accumulated a lot of money, bought yourself a big car, an air conditioner, a costly sofa set and you are still not happy. Work pressure, stress you blame them. Somebody suggests, take a vacation. You go on one. You return and do well for 2 months and again the emptiness, hollowness returns and so you go on another break. The cycle never breaks. You are never really happy. Why? Because you don’t truly love what you do. Ok you became good at this by doing it for all the years. Ok you know nothing but this. So, keep doing it. It’s too late to complain.
Ok. Put that aside do you know what you love to do?
No. Why? You have never been allowed to find out. Your inner voice was always drowned by others opinions and suggestions. You hope badly to know what you truly love to do but, you don’t find out because you never knew in the first place what you were good at and now the inner voice is muted, dead.
Every parent wants their child to be an engineer from IIT or a doctor from the biggest college in the country, after all its a matter of pride. Has the parent ever looked into the eye of its child and asked, “Beta, tell me what you want to be... Whatever... I will stand by you and help you become that.”
Never.... Anything other than doctor or engineer is not safe, its risky. They want us to be doing something that is safe and not something we like. It is their responsibility to get you into a safe spot in life. Wrong.
It’s their responsibility to help you realize what you truly love and what you deem worthy of doing for the rest of your life.
Now, don’t get me started on love. Love is a strangled word. We are only told about 2 types of love all our life. One, motherly love or family love. Two, girl/boy love. Of course, all the movies are busy glorifying the “type two” love. All the movies that attempt to glorify “type one” love are panned as being too senti, emotional, melodramatic.
Now, no one talks about the true love. Don’t we need to love something we spend doing for more than half of our life? Work. No one cares about that or even talks. The one who talks has gone mad or is dreaming because he is clearly talking something that no one else had the courage to think. So, he is wrong.
This brings us to the point of social acceptability. Why is the son of a engineer mocked at for aspiring to be an actor or director? Why is the son of a barber considered a very ambitious person for aspiring to be a doctor? Because, it is the way society has decided it to be. An actor’s son should be an actor. A doctors son, a doctor. Why? It’s in the genes.
Now answer this. What if the doctor is a better actor and became a doctor by accident? Who cares? No time for such stuff. That accident was a blessing in disguise, they say.
We are too sucked into this society thing without realizing that we can also give direction to what is socially acceptable.
Was Amitabh Bachchan’s father an actor? What if he had not risked trying to be an actor and instead been a doctor?
I know. We would miss a legend but that’s a different story altogether. Why? Because amitabh is not your son.
Ok now leave it. What’s your problem? I am a doctor and am not very happy. So what, my wife has enough money to shop every week and my kids go to the best coaching centre. At least they are happy.
Hmm.. You wish... Now, did you ask your children what they wanted to be? Yes, of course I know. They want to be engineers.... Like your parents knew you wanted to be a doctor? I ask.
Look... Love marriages were not socially accepted till sometime back but, now many parents proudly boast it as a symbol of modernity in their thinking and wider perspective.
Do you realize why your kids now have to face so much competition, when you could do away with one-tenth of this competition? The answer is simple because back then people wanted to be many things... Now all the parents want their child to be the same thing and so this competition. All the parents want their children to be “Another brick in the wall”...”another face in the crowd”
