Some kids in India are pushed even more than this Chinese kid; a kid sister of my friend goes to private tuition so that she could pass the entrance test of another private tuition which takes in less students and trains them to write and pass the entrance exam of a reputed college in India (so in simple words, she is going through two levels of tuitions to get into another tuition which she might attend 4-5 years later). This is certainly not a one-off case; there is a generation which is growing up like these or much worse.

Every other week I read in newspaper that a school or college kid killed himself/herself because they failed or got lesser marks than their peers. The most recent I read was a girl killed herself because she got 4 marks lesser than the topper of her class. It is scary and it actually makes you wonder, does the cost of sitting in a cubicle coding a website really worth a life lost.

I have actually thought a lot about the reason “Why Parents are pushing their kids to the wall”, it is certainly not job uncertainty (there are plenty of outsourced jobs here and you can see almost anyone who is slightly not retarded getting one). The only answer I got was “Most of the parents in third-world countries lack good identities” because they are in some jobs which they are not very happy or proud of and the only way for them to escape from their ‘past or present’ is to change their future which they think is in the hands of their kids and not theirs. They constantly hear of stories of kids who studied well, got a job in some company and bought his/her parents house (which if he/she is lucky enough to hold on to a job might own it in next 20 years). As I have seen most of the pushy parents are highly incompetent who actually believe that their life is over, they can’t change it because they missed opportunities when they were young or some crap like that. A real person would go achieve what he wants at any age irrespective of anything else, but pushy parents are not real people because they are betting on their kids and that is much easier to do.

The other part of the problem is housewives (I am not sexist); this is a group which actually doesn’t have an identity. If you have ever been near one, most of their sentences start with “My son/daughter is…” most of these sentences end with an achievement of their kids which are incidentally better than other housewives kids. Now the housewives who were humiliated in the conversation go home force their kids to do well in whatever they do. It is certainly not limited to studies; it can be anything jumping a fence, throwing a ball or anything else. At the end of the day, their kid has to be better than other kids. It is kind of like playing WoW where they want their avatars to be better than others and they want their avatars to level up faster so that they can fight bigger battles. So the problem is certainly not the education system, it is actually the society (housewives and people who are not happy with their jobs). So my solution would be think about the kids later, create jobs for housewives (idle minds are devil’s workshop, they are the clear example of it) and create social programs to make people like their jobs or better yet preach Entrepreneurialism. Keep the housewives busy and you would automatically see an improvement in kids who are back to being creative and independent like they always were. Please leave the kids alone, nurture them and if you can’t don’t kill the creativity they have by putting undue pressure on them.

I have always believed that to be successful intellectually, you should be driven by curiosity rather than fear. — tigerthink

update: This is also being discussed on Hacker News and has some good and contrary thoughts on this particular topic. Check it out here.

Spectators live their life observing the participants, cheering for them, criticizing them and also thinking they are them. In reality, Spectators are really insignificant to human evolution, they don’t change things, and they don’t improve things, even for themselves. Their whole journey of life begins with a search of a benevolent leader who is a solution to all their problems and misfortunes; they keep searching until they are wrong and when they are wrong, they are quick to blame the system for not being right. Spectators also don’t understand that system is not a will of god but a will of men, men who went ahead, tried difficult things and succeeded enough to put in place a set of rules which are favorable to men not spectators. System by itself does not hold any intrinsic value; it is altered by men to suit their needs and they gradually make the system resilient enough to not harm them at all. The system is also planned keeping in mind the opportunities it provides for smart people to be in the class of men, instead of being lost in the artificial world of spectators.

This is how the world works, a minority few men control or set rules for masses or spectators; they make the decisions so that spectators don’t have to. Will there be a world where everyone will have equal rights, my answer would be No. System is designed to reward people who have undergone difficulties; the people who have succeeded will be the ones who will obtain a chance to alter the system for their benefits. So next time when you talk about how a government bailed out a corporation with tax-payers money or how millions are losing jobs every quarter because some men made decisions for you, don’t blame the system or government. Blame yourself for being a spectator.

What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says, ‘Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of God…’ – BioShock.

But to my shock not a single one had followed their dreams including me. They were all either Software Engineers, Insurance Agents, Marketing Executive, Tech Support or some one trying to pursue Higher Education Abroad but what I couldn’t find was a Pilot or an Astronaut or Sports and Movie stars. I said to myself, just to make myself happy that times had changed, World had moved on in a decade. But wait…NASA never stopped hiring astronauts, countries didn’t stop using planes or going to War or people didn’t stop watching Movies and Sports. So what happened to our dreams which we cherished, which we wanted to be fulfilled. Maybe we all let go of our dreams just to take a safer path which was easier than following our dreams. Then I asked myself what stopped me from following my dreams the only answer I got was I felt safe with the crowd just like how sheep’s feel safe with the herd and they always follow the shepherd without exploring anything new or making their existence worthwhile. Maybe we all are a bunch of sheep’s trying to follow the shepherd, who we know at the end is going to trade us to the butcher for a reasonable amount. When we know we will be sold later to the butcher by the shepherd why do we still follow him, it is our own mindset which says it is better to be in a group and be a follower than to be the leader who is not afraid of risk and adventures. Well as I see, we all have potential to do something great, it is just that we can’t overcome the fear of losing and hence we never win. We were not born in this World to get educated for 25-30 years of our life and then work for a Corporation with 80,000 strong workforces where “we are the 79,990th most important employee in the Corporation”. “We are better than that!”

Instead of being in the rat-race, we should all stop for a second and think where we are going. Is it really worth sacrificing the dreams we had for building someone else’s dreams (when we work for Microsoft, we are helping Bill Gates build his dream of “Windows on every desktop”, When we work for facebook, we are helping build Zuckerberg’s dream of connecting the world’s population online). We only have a life and it is very short. Life is meant to lived, take risks, don’t be afraid of adventures, and don’t be afraid to FAIL. Not everyone is lucky enough to FAIL. If you have failed, that means you have tried and trying is very important. If you don’t try, you can’t win.

This is an excerpt from Steve Jobs Stanford Speech which I love “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I want to end this article with a beautiful quote “Everybody’s Unique in this World, Only if we live up that Uniqueness”.