Yes, we have listened this advice thousands
of times ; “Chase your dream” , “Follow your dream” , “You have to listen the
voice of your heart” , “Do what your conscience says” , and many more. The
cheapest thing we get in this world are suggestions and advices. And
paradoxically, the most heavily priced thing is also an advice, a good one. Most
of them are free, absolutely free. But, as they are free they are useless most
of the times if not all the times.
It’s really a cumbersome task to sort out
which advice we should follow and which advice is to be discarded totally. I
wish there were some instruments or softwares designed which could analyse the
validity and usefulness of an idea and quantify it in numbers and percentages
accurately. Then we would not have to waste
too much time in thinking, which everybody assumes that he/she is doing on a
regular basis. But, the sad truth is that we have lost our references.We don’t
know the standards to define success. We don’t really know what our dream is.
What does one know what he should do in his /her life to be happy? Forget the
dream, about fifty percent people have no idea what they are doing the day
after tomorrow. And the rest fifty percent who know don’t actually bother to
think why they are doing that.
Once I overheard a conversation between my
neighbour, Murari Prashad and his 6 year old nephew, Bittu, when the little boy was asked to do his
homework. Naturally, Bittu was not much enthusiastic in doing his homeworks
which generally consumed much of his time in the home which he could have used
in some fun play with his peers. So, he asked his uncle why should he do all
these homeworks daily ? He asked Murari Prashad if he could volunteer to do the
homeworks for him. Thinking that he could now give Bittu some words of
knowledge, Murari Prashad rephrased the lie he had been hearing since his
childhood that he needed to do his homework in order to get education, excel
academically, become successful in life, and some other totally bogus reasons
which he believed were the ultimate truths of life. The boy asked his uncle if
he did his own homeworks during his school days because he had doubt that why
he was not successful in life if he had done his homeworks. I remorse the fact
that I could not see the face of Murari Prashad at the moment. But I believe,
seeing someone’s face like that, someone may have coined the phrase ‘ face like
a squeezed lemon’. The question was
simply irrefutable.
Bittu didn’t regard his uncle to be a
successful person. How can he follow the advice of someone who has failed
himself ? Some may differ in opinion by saying that we gain experience from
failures and we need to follow the advice of those who have failed in some
particular task. But, what I believe is that person knows one way which leads
to failure. He doesn’t know what one must do to succeed. He can only tell what
you should not do. You can still follow his advice by not doing what mistake
did he do and fail in so many other ways. So, seeking advice is really a tough
job as you have to find the expert who has mastered the field and has made
every possible mistakes before finding the definitive way to do the work which
never fails. Otherwise, I told you that is the cheapest and useless advice.
Talking about dream and success, who do you
think is a success , a secondary school teacher or the millionaire who owns the
school, the infrastructures and all its appurtenances ? We do not know enough
about these two to make a prompt decision that which one is a success or which
one is a failure. We do not know whether the school teacher is the son of a poor
farmer of a tribal community who earned his daily wages sweltering in the
scorching sun to make his son through college or is a spoiled brat of a
billionaire who once owned half of the country. And, we also don’t know if the
school owner was son of one of those quoted in above example. Changing their
backgrounds makes them success or failures even in the same position. Not
peeing in bed is success for a five year old, being able to sell all the
cookies before noon is success for a cookies vendor, having all his students
get good grades is success for a school teacher, and being able to win the
olympic gold might be a success for a
hard trained athlete. And the goals and criteria of evaluating success change;
daily, monthly and yearly.
