7.55 am and I am upfront at the stop light on Blacow and Grimmer Boulevard. In front of me I see an ocean of human faces passing through the light to go to their school. A school that I honestly believe does believe in the potential of its students, encourages them to dream, play hard ( the school has 50+ sports teams), have fun and yet all I see is an army of academic robots. Their faces are expressionless and every one of them is looking for something on the road. Why are they all looking down? Why aren’t they talking to each other? These are teens, they are supposed to be laughing, chirping, goofing off on the road and just being teens. Instead they all look sad, just plain sad.
Today is the first day of the Indian festival Navratri and this was definitely not the post in mind, and yet the image of these lifeless robots crossing the street is so vivid, that I cannot write about any thing else. How and when did the chirpy kinder kids grow into these stressed out young adults? Kinder starts at 5 and high school starts at 13/14; we the brilliant adults have managed to suck the life out of our most precious ones in just 6-7 years. Amazing!! Why did this happen? Is it their fault? Definitely not. They have only been on this planet for a few years. I blame my generation, no not the grandparents, but us, the current parents. We have completely messed it up for these kids. Our dreams, our aspirations, our fears, our joys; we impose it on them.
In the name of success, we push them to succeed in tougher courses, without realizing that our definition of success may not be theirs. Why does one have to do something hard to be considered successful? Why is simple not enough anymore?
In our desire to make the kids smart, we have made them so smart that they are now afraid to cry, try or avail for help. They are afraid, very afraid of failure.
Parent time has been replaced with tutors. Do we as parents even realize that no tutor will be as vested in our children as ourselves. Why are we working so hard? Maybe just so we can pay the tutors and then gain the bragging right for their success.
We blame the increased cost of everything. Yes, I agree life is expensive now, infact very expensive, but that’s not the child’s fault, again it is our generation that made the economy of today. The kids did not ask for million dollar homes and expensive cars, we did.
The vision stays with me and this Navratri I pray for the sanity and the safety of our kids. May the goddesses give the kids so much strength that they are able to make this world a better place. A world where we stop running in the Maze looking for our Giver.
