"To be or not to be that is the question" it's one of the famous line written by Shakespeare. Ever wondered why it is so famous for so many years? It indicates an ultimate battle with ourself that everyone has to face occasionally in our life. What it means is that you have choices; you don't have to do something which someone else is telling you which we generally hate to do. But even having a choice, it doesn't make our life easy, it leads to chaos.
They say that our birth or death is not in our hands, it is decided by fate or god. There we don't seem to have choice.
In life, we have to make choices at various stages. As a kid, father or mother of the baby ask a typical question - "whom you like the most?" And the kid also replies something. Innocence at its best; whatever the answer is, they both continue to love their kid. But if the same question is asked in a family court by the judge where a kid has to choose the person, can u describe in words the state of kid's mind?
"Mera beta to doctor banega", "I want my daughter to become CA". Our parents always try to influence what we should become. Perhaps it must be their innermost desire which they couldn't fulfill because of lack of choices. In-spite of that, majority of them managed to do well, to stay in metro city raising their family. Sometimes the lack of choice gets a better person out of you. These days kids have lots of choices. Their selection starts from choosing the side after 10th - arts, science or commerce. In each of these streams they have go on selecting specializations. But these selections are never easy. Engineering or medical, in engineering whether it's computer or mechanical, plain commerce or banking insurance etc. On top of that University has started implementing grading /choice based system. But tell me frankly, has it made student's life simple?
After education, one important stage that everyone has to go through is marriage. If you ask your parents how they got married, many of them would have a same story. They got married to partners whom their family members decided. Many of them also had to live in joint family satisfying the needs of more than 5 members in the family. Inspite of differences of opinions, most of the marriages lasted for more than 25 yrs. Today we live in much liberal world. Boys and girls have choice of selecting partners as per their ambition, education, financial level etc. They also live separately from their parents. But inspite of so much of freedom, why divorce cases have increased? Why current generation is failing to keep their partners happy?
When I was a child, we all used to watch a single channel called Door-Darshan on TV. Later on metro channel started. We were quite happy and as a family used to watch lot of programs. Now cable tv has come into picture with more than 300 channels. But what has happened....Do we watch tv programs together? I know in some families, there are two TVs because different members like to see different programs. My parents were regular viewers of daily soaps and I had to put up a decent fight to watch a program of my choice if it's was coming in their way. Finally as internet came in, i gave up knowing that apart from tv they don't have choice. With smartphones and internet the situation has changed so drastically that now my dad who used to watch daily soaps religiously, now watches youtube videos of his choice.
When we used to go on picnic, we always uses to play Antakshari and it used to last the whole day. In young generation, the problems are becoming more severe. Recently I went to industrial visit with my students. In bus, they started playing Antakshari. But their enthusiasm lasted for 15 minutes. After that they got bored as they couldn't enjoy each other's songs and soon engrossed into their own head phones. They didn't realize what they were missing.
What is causing these changes? Is availability of choices killing our ability to adjust with each other? So much so that we are getting disconnected from the people around us? And after selecting choices, are we happy? Are we becoming like that star whose own gravitional force becomes so strong that it finally destroys itself?
Too much isn't it? Confusing or chaotic? You had a choice to read till the end...
