Are we moving away from ourselves?

Have you ever wondered how people lived before the induction of a public education system? How were they 'educated'? How were they earning? One often reads reports about a person's ability/talent to be maximum when they are a child. And in our own personal experience, we realize that we move away from it as we grow older. We no longer think it's important to play outside. We no longer think that mistakes are a part of life. Rather, to quote Sir Ken Robinson from his TED Talk "We are educated out of this". Listening to such talks makes me realize that there was a time in history where people would theorize. They would theorize about our very existence, about why we have days and nights, about why the earth is round etc. Some of these theorists have gone on to make a name that will be etched in history as the "father's" of a certain phenomenon. But that is not what I want to focus on. Since the advent of public education system, I have observed a decline in the creative interests of people all around me. We are all trying to be industry ready to land that job, to get that pay raise and to buy that car. This leads me to believe that each one of us has not discovered themselves enough. This further trickles down to unfulfilled potential in each one of us thereby, resulting in an unhappy tomorrow. So, I am going to urge each one of you to reconnect with your core self, discover and let the journey take you where it may.

Liberation of Auschwitz

Recently, I happened to watch the documentary Liberation of Auschwitz which deals with rescuing prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet military forces. It contained real footage of the atrocity of crimes that were inflicted on these people. Should you choose to watch this film, I request you to not watch it on a Friday night like I did. There are a number of things that I learnt after watching this film. The most important thing is that you can read as much as you want about crimes committed by the SS but nothing will impact you as much as the visual scenes. Let me just summarize some of the inhumane things that were carried out by the SS.
- They gased [poisoned by using cyanide] the prisoners in a gas chamber after they became weak and were unable to work.
- The doctors purposely injected diseases like yellow fever into weak patients and carried out medical experiments on them.
- Women who were old and could not work were kept in stables [Yes, you read that right]. They were kept in stables like horses where no sanitation was provided. Upto 5 or 6 women were put into a stable.

What baffles me is this - I can accept that 1 person is mad. But how could he convince an entire army that his vision and actions were right. I have no answers, but I suspect that given the right conditions it is easy to influence people's thoughts drastically. A lot of research has gone into this field and I am sure I cannot add anything of value to this topic. All I can say is that it is good to evaluate yourself periodically, have a neutral perspective, a calm demeanour and spread the joy.

Cheers folks!

How we take the fixed path to success

Were you born in India? The chances are that your life will be decided before you were born. Your parents will send you to a “good school” with “good teachers”. Your initial years at the school will be fun because you are young and have no responsibility. Before you know it, you reach middle school and you are supposed to get serious about studies. If not, you are put into tuition. And when you reach high school, some wacked up parents (thankfully not mine) put you into coaching classes for competitive exams (Note how I am not naming these exams, but we all know them too well). Then you reach that phase where everything is made to seem like a life and death situation where you cannot have fun. This is because you have to become an engineer or a doctor or an accountant. That is just unfair! I mean, you are 17. How do you know what to do with the rest of your life when you are not considered responsible enough to come home after 7.30 PM? How do you know you have found your passion when you are not ‘considered responsible’? How in god’s name are you supposed to put your foot down and say –Hey, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life! But all that doesn’t matter. You will eventually grow into the fat salary ass who will sit at home and say the same things to your children because ‘the safe path is a successful path’. Well don’t! Safe path is not necessarily a happy path.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life” ~ John Lennon