Great expectations
ANURADHA R.
‘So what are your plans for the future, young man?’ thus went what was perhaps the one billionth of its kind of a question that was being asked of my brother. ‘Aunty, let me pass my Boards first’. ‘What! You mean to say you have no plans as of now?! At your age, we had charted our course well in advance.’ That effectively silenced my brother, demoralising him as well. And that is the kind of treatment that every young student of faces on entering that last lap in the race laid out by the schools of today. Of course, every individual needs to have a clear perception of his goals and objectives in life, but the 12th grade is a bit too early for a child to determine for himself all this and more.
Chart the right course
Even otherwise, few children manage to plan their future or chart the direction their life will take while still at school. They may decide upon their choice of subject, and also work out their strengths and weaknesses. Based on that, they may have a rough idea of what kind of field they might find themselves heading for. But, in life, there are no certainties. I remember one instance of a friend of mine who had quite set her heart on becoming a doctor. All along in her 12th ,and well past it, she was quite enthused along this direction but somewhere towards the end of her final year she decided that she had enough of this field and would prefer to do her MBA!
In a lighter vein, how many of us proudly declare as 5 -year olds that we would love to be engine drivers little visualizing the hardship in the life of these brave stalwarts of the Indian railways! I remember how as a child, I used to take off on flights of fancy and see myself as Einstein eloquently addressing an audience of weeds, bugs, and an army of ants on issues such as the relativity of time, space, etc. If one were to judge me on the basis of my muddled notions as a child, perhaps one would think that I was heading nowhere. But with the passage of time, and with the accumulation of a rich layer of experiences, my purpose in life became crystallized. It is much the same with most children. Yes, a few are clear about what they want to do, and follow it up with action, but most are in a constant state of evolution. So, instead of berating them in their 12th for their perceived lack of purpose, it would be far better if we could help them determine their areas of interests and suggest a likely course of action.
Realistic expectations
In the end, childhood is a time to dream, a time to build castles in the air. That is the time when we sometimes choose careers for their flamboyance or perceived glamour, or maybe influenced by what we see or read. Some of us do have a well defined purpose early on, but most of us are in a state of constant flux. So for adults to judge us on the basis of that is probably unfair.
As the child evolves into a teenager, he undergoes varied experiences that shape him so that the child who seemed to confusedly wander along is now on the right track.
In the words of Barbara Hall, ‘the path to our destination is not always a straight one... it doesn’t matter which road we embark on… what matters is that we embark.’
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