THE LIFE... THE RACE... BUT WHY??? FOR WHAT???

It was just another normal day in my very normal life. I was roaming in the beautiful garden in front of our house, when I saw a small caterpillar struggling its way through the leaves. Instead of getting angry on the little creature for spoiling the lustrous leaves, somehow that day my thoughts raced in a different direction. This struggling caterpillar would one day metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly and fly high. That’s the order of nature, I thought. Just like the human babies learn to walk, talk and then one day, they too transform into wonderful beings and fly high with their dreams.

At this thought I shuddered, as somehow, it didn’t feel quite right. Are human beings indeed growing up to be happy and lively living beings? Yes, they are successful and technically more advanced than they used to be a generation ago. But are they happier than their forefathers? Maybe or maybe not; they don’t even have time and patience to analyze that.

Human babies don’t grow up gradually in a world of competition, rather they are born straight into it. When they are barely a couple of years old and haven’t even realized their existence, they are made to appear for interviews into pre-nursery and then, nursery and what not. They are seasoned to believe that they are worthless unless they top their class. Even if they top, they are taught not to be satisfied until they top the next level and so on.

They take heavy tutions to score great grades in their schools. Then, the academically sound students would most probably take up the Science Stream, then, either the coveted Medical or Engineering lines, then, the respective Post-Graduation and so on. Hence, they manage to get a good job and decent earnings. The race just doesn’t end here. After that to keep up their social image, they buy a big car and a big house and end up exhausting themselves to earn more so as to pay the huge EMIs. In their quest for more, they somewhere lose their main purpose: happiness.

Every time I see these small kids running this rat race following the person in their front without knowing where they’re headed towards, I remember Einstein’s precise words, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it’ll grow up believing that it’s a fool. At this tender age of innocence, friendship for them is no longer about befriending someone good at heart, rather it’s about nurturing a give-and-take relationship with the person who scores more than you so that you can grow. They play, not out of their free will, but because they have to win some Badminton or Tennis Tournament. They hardly get to analyze the world as a harmonious place of co-existence. For them, it’s binary, either they win or they lose. We all are gradually becoming a part of this very rat race. We lose little moments of joy in this tryst to win. We don’t realize that even the winner of a rat race is still a rat.

We are generating a generation of passive youth, who hate the mornings because of their distaste for the upcoming day, get bored in the afternoons for their intellectually non-stimulating routine work, get tired in the evening though they believe they haven’t done anything worthwhile and feel depressed during the night wondering over what’s missing in their life. We are creating people, who would love to walk under and park their vehicles in the shade of a tree, but, won’t ever plant a tree. We are manufacturing people, who value an asset by its price tag, choose friends purely for benefits, build a majestic house but don’t appreciate beauty and judge their accomplishments by their society’s standards even though they don’t believe in being social.

It took ages for human beings to evolve and yet through the advancing times, we’re de-evolving to machines. The early man created the concept of job, probably as a means of division of labour, but, we’ve made it our lives. Everything was done is a search for happiness, but, we’ve forgotten the main aim somewhere in the way. In our fast-pacing lives with big bungalows and fast cars, we don’t know a moment of leisure. What about all the dreams we cherished as a child? What about giving back to the society? What about caring about our mental status as much as we maintain our social status? Do we still understand the meaning of love, care, selflessness and friendship?

Endless thoughts were bombarding my mind from all angles as if I was questioning anything and everything in this world. Then, gradually the caterpillar walked its way through the leaves and went out of my sight. Maybe, the next time when a beautiful butterfly flutters by me, I’ll wonder if this was the one which took me away from the reality for a while. Then suddenly, it dawned upon me that that it’s time I rush to work. Now sometimes I wonder, was this short break from reality indeed a break or was it a shocking tryst with reality instead.