Let's not let our dreams die.....

Let’s not let our dreams die…

The History has witnessed, turning of years into decades & decades into centuries. But the speed, the pace with which we are witnessing the passing of the time since the beginning of 21st Century, has never ever been experienced before.
It's like, harder we try to grab it, hold it; faster it slips out of our hand.

Somehow, I personally feel, we have been blessed because of the slot of time frame of life allotted to us to play our part, to be able to enact our role & contribute our bit in the vast ocean of time, whose every passing moment adds to the wealth of History.
It somehow does mark & carries a significance & stamps an everlasting impression in the form of “My Life”; which of course is unique in its own way & doesn’t carry any similarity or comparisons, what so ever, with any other breathing soul above the earth & below the sky.

The “experiences” are generally “Grey” in its expression. It’s these shades of Grey which adds richness & beauty to every unit of time an experience in made of, making it a moment to treasure & cherish for.
Amongst us, who share the same platform of time frame, having lived out four decades of our journey, would most certainly agree to have seen more of what life had to offer, in its all possible colours, in its most versatile form.

I somehow have always believed that we are the passengers passing through the tunnel of transition. It is in this journey through the transition, we have experienced & continue to experience, the demands & expectations being raised & pressed, to be responded to, to be fulfilled, to be lived up to, to be met with.
It is during this journey, we were & are expected to hold, respect & support, which quite efficiently we have, the two generations above & two below us. If one sees through our times, carefully having a re-look on every growing year, may infer, that it was during these times in the near history the seeds in the form of stress on education, to perform, to compete, to prove got implanted.
Yes, it’s true that most of us, in our times, may not have had a clear vision , a well cut out goal, the idea, the plan to implement & execute; but were surely had got tuned into the race mode. Due to narrow outlook of & within the society in existence during those times, lack of awareness beyond one’s own world & deprivation of the global touch, the best which was expected from & out of us, was to get hold of a decently paid job, to inherit the family business, if any, or else were expected to do something worthwhile which would result in optimum use of our time & energy and help us make reasonable earning.

Due to limited resources and limited access to the world beyond, the thinking outside the box never happened. We started believing in working harder and the word “success” got quite easily & conveniently tagged to that with earning bucks.
Again, with no offence to our generations above, most of us got used to the mediocrity of life. Not that we were not reading about the world of dreams outside the wall of our well protected home, not that we did not dream about those dreams, but we couldn’t leave or bet on our atmosphere of convenience, to grow beyond.
We did have talent, we did have loads of creativity, we did have wings of imagination to fly with, but what we lacked was a long term, well crafted, well guided road map, to be able to have watered these plants into a fully grown tree. 

Fortunately, in the world, less demanding, most of us got settled into our respective lives, trying to balance out every aspect of being a responsible citizen, a responsible human.
But somewhere down within, we always carried the light of unfinished dreams. We never missed an opportunity to re-live those dreams with our eyes closed. Little did we know & anticipate the speed of passing times. And the rapidly changing times with increasingly clearer global view, struck a realisation of having missed few of the opportunities, few precious years, of our times, by not able to risk our comfort zones.
By then we already had the gen-next, our children, the young brigade gazing towards us, being responsible for them.
This did not seem like the time for us to turn back, trying to run in the pursuit to achieve & grab those unfinished dreams, to fulfil.
Not only are we responsible & accountable towards our present duties but are also expected to be the architect of the life of our children, whom we wouldn’t like to get imprisoned into a close restricted world.

Well aware of this, we being not able to carry the weight of our own dreams & desires, and in order not to lose sight of them, put them onto the shoulders of our children, the Gen-Next.
And here begins the conflict.
The frustration of our under-achievement gets reflected in our expectations from our children. We fight our lives out, trying to make them convinced about what’s right & what’s wrong for them, purely from our point of view based on our experiences. We enter into debates & arguments, resulting in bitterness, for not being able to penetrate through the wall of resistance.
Most of the times, what we perceive as a resistance, is merely, trying to dent into the wall of our own expectations. In being biased with our self view point, we fail to understand & touch their psyche.

As I said earlier, everyone is unique in their own way, in the way one puts use of their senses to experience the world around them. No one can live the experience of the other and thus can’t feel the emotions attached to it with the same frequency, intensity & depth.
Today’s generation have, in front of them, a pool of opportunities, choices & options to choose from. They have various medium of access to gather data, analyze them & put them into proper order & perspective to move towards their goal.
Unlike us, they are sharper, with much clear goal & vision & have means to achieve the same.
Unlike us, they not only dream with their eyes closed but chase them with their eyes open.
They are uniquely talented & having high intelligent quotient.
They don’t need to be compared with any other brains of their age. What is needed, is, to assure & ensure them that we are there, with them, for them, any time they need to turn to us for our love.
Just this sense of security, belief in self & elevated level of self confidence would make them fly over oceans in their full strength, rhythm & harmony. 

This mutual harmony would save us lots of our time & energy, at home & at work, to be able to pursue our desires & wishes justifying the notion that “Today is the first day of the rest of our life….”

Sanjay-jogani.blogspot.com: The Social Death....

Sanjay-jogani.blogspot.com: The Social Death....

The Social Death....

The Social death

In the early 1990s’, the first time, Indian economy was left open to the masses.
We can say, that was one of the first initiatives by India government to step into the experience of much bigger, much profitable global markets.
Till then, the first four and a half decades of Indian governance was mainly based on much restricted, much controlled business environment.

The initiative to decontrol, let loose was of course welcome by one & all. The Indian manufacturing sector suddenly had an easy access to the global demand, and be a part & a contributor into the global economic system.
And at the same time, the world raised its head to glance towards India as a much stronger and potentially dormant consumer & user of/for their products.

The nation, of course took a few years to absorb & get used to the changed equations of the world markets.
Along with the commerce & economics, it brought a radical change in the social configuration of Indian masses.
The influx of foreign goods, technology and an easy access to adapt, use & consume, the lifestyle related goods, created a sense of awe, amusement & surprise in the Indian social circle.
The financially blessed class could put their hands on the latest productions, almost at the same time with their foreign counterparts.

Besides the obvious craze & adaptations, came the biggest revolution for the people of India in the form of CONNECTIVITY.
It can be well claimed that the 2nd half of the decade of 90s’, made the world much smaller a space for us. It suddenly made the actual geographical distance seem to matter lesser & lesser.
Yes, here we are talking about the freedom to get connected, liberalization of the telecommunication world, internet & world-wide-web.
Though it made it’s late entry into India, was already a phenomenon, being made optimum use of, by developed economies of the West.

Now, leaving the last 2 decades behind us, let’s step into our todays’, the current times into the 2nd decade of 21st Century.

If we ask almost anybody in India, randomly, irrespective of caste, creed, color, religion, education, social class, financial standings; about their view point of last 20 years; are sure to get an unanimous response in the form of various steep, extreme, sudden changes being experienced by one & all, in the last a decade or so., precisely in the last 7-8 years.
Here we refer to the changes in the form of actually experiencing, in person, the Darwinism theory & principles of “Struggle for survival” & “Survival for the fittest”.
The Indian Socio-economic system has experienced all the vulnerabilities which came with the liberalization, as a package. The recessionary phase became a more frequent cycle, instead of once upon a time story.
But the biggest impact which struck the nation, was the unexpected change in the lives of the people. Liberalization did bring a change in the technical aspect, but without the people being made ready to embrace the same.
It was like too quick, too sudden.
The mentality, the attitude, the acceptance, the understanding was too immature to touch & feel the change through your hands. It went on like a slide-show which keeps you amused all throughout and not giving enough time to actually fix your senses & get attached to it.

As we know, one needs to start from kindergarten & spend the next 10 years, under gradual, systematic, cumulative advance to reach to the first competitive level of Std- X.
Here the Indian mass was exposed to & promoted much faster & thrown into the highly advanced times, with much less experience & maturity to actually deserve the stand.

Along with it came the increased polarization of the people in every sense of the term.
Most of us, I believe, must have experienced through the late night sweet stories from our parents & Grand-Parents about their times, where the words of virtue as “trust” , “security”, “hard-work”, “honesty”, “responsibility”, “adaptability” , “patience” ; always found repetitive mentions.
But frankly, these mentions are getting rarer with every passing day, today.
The trust is lost within families. Nobody can claim & feel fully secured. Hard-work is replaced by smart/quick work.
Honesty doesn’t earn money.
Nobody wants to take responsibilities on their shoulders and be accounted.
Patience is the hardest thing to put into practice & thus adaptability has become a rare case model.
The entire focus and efforts are being applied to earn more & more money & power to keep oneself an edge above all, to be happier, to feel more secured, and to maintain one’s social status.

It’s not bad to earn money, more money; but the compromises being done & means to achieve the same has forced man to stoop to an embarrassing level.
The principles & ethics are the matter being ridiculed and anybody referring to such terms is being considered a hypocrite. 
The innocent, immature, ill-experienced mind of a 10-12 year old in the late 90s’ was exposed to the lure of mobile phones & internet. Suddenly the world for them became of multiple choices and dreams generated to achieve the same, at any cost.

One morning, one day, and things changed for them.
The simple rustic laid-back child, the emerging youth started dreaming of reaching to the moon. And at the same time, came the realization that it’s a race and he/she needs to be one of the front-liners to touch the winning line.
THE RACE IS ON.
Winning at all cost attitudes is getting stronger.
Compromises being done.
Rules are broken.
Short cuts being discovered & implemented.
The innocence of the childhood met SUDDEN death. The physical senses got exposed to the medium much faster & much deeper than actual inner elevation of thoughts, education, action & thus the wisdom.
The medium of latest gadgets implanted in them the new level of desire, greed, dreams beyond the practical limits of nature. And the medium took complete control of their controlling system and made them increasingly non-sensitive towards much required social etiquettes, responsibilities & behaviors.
And this, somehow, I believe resulted in frequent recent non-human incidents of suicides, rapes, killings.
The fact that, the happenings like these are being considered at its peak, in recent times, shows the source , the root , around a decade and a half back, when the innocent minds were infused with various forces and made vulnerable.
I consider the late 90s’ as the time, the tipping point, of the socially destructive phenomena which we all are experiencing today.

Friends, the science, the technology, the evolution is not bad.
It’s a blessing for every living being on earth, if being used at the right time, with care & with respect to the nature around us.
Before the changes are being applied to serve the mankind, why not the social system, the biggest beneficiary, be made aware, made educated, and made to understand the pros & the cons?

Change is good. Change is welcomed. But the people, for whom the change is being brought about, should be the matter of subject on the first hand…..

#The images used are only for reference & understanding purpose and is sole proprietary right of the original owner.