There is a huge resistance to growth in society. People become comfortable in their frames of life and resist to grow. I have seen many bureaucrats who did their graduation from the best of the colleges in India and outperformed so many for that but after coming to the service, they just refuse to grow. As if they have done hard work for their entire life. I think the worst frames are the ones that have social approval. For example, in the Academy, there was a narrative among the probationers that Keen Type Probatoners, called KTP sarcastically, do not know how to enjoy their lives. This was an extension of the narrative I faced during school time where the kids who have decided to do their traditional business, which does not require much skill set, will make fun of the students who work hard. They are so fixated on their limited frame that they can't see any value in the larger framework of life. Those people could not see life beyond the easy choice of continuing with the traditional businesses and these bureaucrats could not widen their framework of life beyond getting selected for civil services and getting a tag of being a civil servant.
Resistance to change becomes all the more strong when the frame is supported by the society we live in. We have all types of crap in the society we live in. One of the most acceptable crap is that life is to relax and chill and we need to work hard so that we get a chill job, get money, and powers, and chill the rest of our lives. Then come targets and work pressure, the expectations of the bosses, and kids, their responsibilities, medical issues and so many more issues in life. We are not ready to face these things since we were told that life is chill once you get admission to a good college. We take some time to get into the new frame.
However, generally, by the time we reach our 40s, even all these things are also settled. Office is settled and kids have started going to their schools and in some cases, they even go to their colleges. Now what do we do? We try to chill more. Visit different tourist places, have food in expensive restaurants, buy IPL matches, wear expensive clothes and watches, and have gup shup with our friends. Society does not tell us anything beyond this. We try to explore one or more of the so-called spiritual organizations to get some new seeking in our lives. These organizations, for their own petty interest, give some mantras and practices that we keep practicing mindlessly with the expectation of miracles.
Unfortunately, since our childhood, the entire framework of life is set around seeking. We work for one or the other rewards. We study hard to get admission to a reputed college, work hard at college to get a good job, invest in a relationship to marry a person of our choice, work hard at the workplace to get promotions and invest money for good returns. Our frame of life is limited to seeking. We have found some tools to get what we seek. For example, if we are seeking comforts within the limited frame of our lives, society tells us that comforts are linked to money and money to a job in a reputed company. That is why the job becomes our lifeline. Similarly, if we seek social validation, whatever society likes is to be done. We go to attend mindless social gatherings, meet people who have no substance, buy expensive clothes and watches to get appreciation from people, and place the best of our photographs to get appreciation from people.
Our frames remain fixed. If we seek comfort, we keep seeking the same throughout our lives. If we seek social validation, we keep seeking the same through different tools. We see the utility of everything from the same frame. Society is too rigid to change its frames and if an individual outgrows society, it's a tough fight. All the enlightened people had to face the same be in Buddha, Shankaracharya, Swami Vivekananda, Christ, or Mohammad. In fact, whatever a free soul preaches, the society with the fixed frames translates those teachings in a much-perverted form within its own limited frame leaving little scope for the people to explore. However, any and everybody whose frame of life is much bigger than that of society has to rebel. Rebellion has a cost. However, when a person gets a glimpse of freedom, all these frames appear to be too narrow to "settle within them". Resistance to grow ends the moment a person sees the first glimpse of truth. once a person starts flying fighter planes in the Air Force, it's difficult for him to aspire to become a taxi driver. However, till the taxi driver gets an opportunity to fly the planes, it's difficult to explain to him what it feels like to fly the planes. People in different frames speak quite different languages and that's why the same life appears to be so different to different people.
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