Hey Friends,
I do not believe in calling anything outrightly useless but my take has always been that one must experience things in life and regulate them as per their living philosophies. However, there is one thing prominently stand out for me is that ; Every society has a way of transmitting its values to the young. Some societies do it through religious festivals or community lectures/ Satsangi gatherings or military parades. There is a new trend which is becoming more popular across the world is through a secular sermon called the commencement address. These days colleges generally organise TED talks and ask a person distinguished by fantastic career success to give a speech in which they claim that career success is not that important. And then these phenomenally accomplished individuals often go on to tell their audiences that you shouldn’t be afraid to fail.
I specifically brought up this context is because these young people learn that failure can be wonderful—if you happen to be J. K. Rowling, Denzel Washington, or Steve Jobs. But I am yet to see a repeat of J. K. Rowling, Steve Jobs or any other similar happening. The only things, I have seen is to sell out these one timer incredible stories perpetually sold to people on some or other pretext for their own intended gains.
To put it straight from a psychological perspective, failure or defeat is an extremely difficult emotion to handle. Given a chance none of us want to be in that space. Did you hear people say – “either you succeed or learn ( instead of calling it a failure). To me, it is more of a practical way to handle your difficult emotion of failure. I say it because failures always changes your personality and reactions to certain happenings/people/ organisations or institute permanently for life and if you want to name it as a Learning-that’s okay but remember you never stay as a same person. I sometime call failures as a -‘BIG SWIM TO NOWHERE’.
I was thinking from a students perspective and when you’re a student, life is station to station. There’s always the next assignment, the next test, the next admissions application to structure a student’s schedule and energies. Social life has its dramas, but at least it’s laid out right there in front of you in the dining hall and the dorm, town and identities. But in the age of “I’m Free to Be Myself,” you are expected to find your own career path, your own social tribe, your own beliefs, values, life partners, gender roles, political viewpoints, and social identities.
As a student, your focus was primarily on the short term, but after graduation you need a different set of navigational skills, to the far-horizon goals you will begin to orient your life toward.
What is more interesting is that from the most structured and supervised childhood in human history, you get out after graduation into the least structured young adulthood in human history. Yesterday parents, teachers, coaches, and counsellors were all marking your progress and cheering your precious self. When the approval bathing stops. The world doesn’t know your name or care who you are. The person on the other side of the desk at every job interview do not easily recall your name.
If you hear and think carefully, through these commencement speeches on the Instagram or U Tube, it seems that by doing that we hand over some great awesome presents to the new generation but eventually it turns out to be a emoty big boxes of nothing. Conveniently, we forget that many young people are graduating into limbo. Floating and plagued by uncertainty, they want to know what specifically they should do with their lives. And what we do through these speeches – we hand them over the great empty box of freedom! These speeches propagate that purpose of life is to be free. Freedom leads to happiness! We’re not going to impose anything on you or tell you what to do. We give you your liberated self to explore. Enjoy your freedom!
My understanding is that these students in the audience put down this empty box of ‘ freedom’, because they are drowning in freedom. What they’re looking for is direction. What is freedom for? How do I know which path is my path? And these big questions remain unanswered.
Then what we do ?, we hand them another empty big box called ‘big box of possibility!’. And tell them – Your future is limitless! You can do anything you set your mind to! The journey is the destination! Take risks! Be audacious! Dream big!
But this mantra doesn’t help them, either because they are essentially looking to find the answers to big questions of their lives with a big “ How”? hovering over them.
And, precisely at this junction, what we do ?, we again hand them over a big empty box called – ‘ a big box of autonomy’ . We tell them – You are on your own. It’s up to you to define your own values. No one else can tell you what’s right or wrong for you. Your truth is to be found in your own way through your own story that you tell about yourself. Do what you love!.
The problem here is – We give them even more uncertainty. They want to know why they should do this as opposed to that. And we have nothing to say except, telling – Figure it out yourself based on no criteria outside yourself.
Technically, this listening tribe are floundering in a formless desert. Not only do we not give them a compass, We take a bucket of sand and throw it all over their heads.
_ Joe
If you end up following these speeches thoughtlessly, you might find yourself – scheduling a meditation retreat here, a random visit there, one fellowship one year and another one the next. There’s swing dancing one day, Salsa twice a week, Bikram Yoga for a few months and occasionally a cool art gallery on a Sunday afternoon. Your Instagram feed will be amazing, and everybody will think you’re the coolest person ever. You may tell yourself that relationships really matter to you—scheduling drinks, having lunch—but after you’ve had twenty social encounters in a week and you are not sure what they are supposed to build to. You may have thousands of conversations but probably you remember none. In reality, it’s not that glamorous as it appears to be.
I say to these tribes that you do have an amazing power inside you but you are scattering them in all directions. There is a high probability that you will be plagued by a fear of missing out. Your possibilities are endless, but your decision-making landscape is hopelessly flat. It remind me a saying of Annie Dillard who put it by saying that “ how you spend your days is how you spend your life. If you spend your days merely consuming random experiences, you will begin to feel like a scattered consumer.”
So – THINK CAREFULLY & ACT PRACTICALLY in everything you do.
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