"The future belongs to those who believe in the beautyof their dreams.”
:- Eleanor Roosevelt
:- Eleanor Roosevelt
Hi, do you know about dreams?
Yes, dreams, not aspirations or aims or any of the jargons that we in B-schools
all over seem never to be in short supply of. You know those unrealistic things
that we used to think we would do once we grow up? Well, we are all grown up
now, what have any of you done of those ,
let’s say ‘dreams’ then, lately? Oh, are they hobbies now? Or perhaps
interests? Or have they been reduced to some lines on a piece of documentation
you call a Curriculum vitae (yeah, that’s CV.)
Why is it that we are so
overtaken by this urge to surge ahead in the rat race that we forget that gave
us shape? The first instinct of a person is generally said to be their primal
nature responding to the situation. How many of us wanted to become rock stars,
pilots, cricketers, scientists, actors, artists, chefs or race- car drivers? Or
was a job in an office where you spend 12 hrs a day slogging, most of the time
not even to see a sizeable impact of all your effort that ‘ultimate wish’.
Unlikely. I could rattle of examples of people who followed their dreams and
what they achieved thereof, dark ages till date. But it would not do us any
good. Have to be practical would be the first jibe in reply, followed almost
immediately by ‘How would we survive?’ and leading the vanguard, most of the
time, ‘our parents would kill us’. Yes well, it is a slightly impossible thing
to claim that all these people who have lit the way before us were impractical,
died of depravation or were tortured by their families all at the same time.
As a generation we seem to be
afraid to take the leap of faith it seems, and I most definitely include myself
in this. It can very well be argued that we have seen the rise of more
entrepreneurs in the last 2 decades then we have seen in the last century. This
is the age of the microchip and the touchpad after all. Science fiction is
becoming reality as we walk, talk and touch our way into tomorrow. Employment
avenues have widened, with new ones coming everyday. After all, how many of us
would have thought that being a party planner would ever be a good paying job?
Yet the part of the world where the greater majority of the entire planet lives
seems to be focussed on taking up engineering or corporate business! Imagine at
the pace the world has changed, IS changing and then imagine how different it
would look 10 years down the line. Wouldn’t you rather do something that you
are good at and enjoy doing then something for which the beginning and the end
result is that pay-check?
Take for example our very own
Bodhi tree. Is Satadru Bagchi going to be immortalised in our hallowed
corridors for being an awesome manager or because of the song that generations
of Xlers have memorised and will memorise till posterity?
How many such examples are
toiling in our great engineering colleges or b-Schools? How many can stake
their claim to be the next Narayanmurthy, the next Kalam, the next Sabeer Bhatia
the next anything? Yes remarkable achievements by people such as J.K Rowling
and Paralympic athlete Monique van der Vorst who never gave up on their dreams
isn’t the norm and that exactly is the point. It needs to be. Or do you want to
wake up one day in the future and start brooding over what happened to you?
In the present scenario that the
world is morphing into we need these dreams, these abstract hopes to be
converted into reality. For in a time and place where people are doing what
they love to do, what they are interested in doing can we hope to see what
future the very best in ourselves can create. And if the past is anything to go
by, that perhaps is the closest we can achieve to collective nirvana.
