We all do hard work and tell our kids to do hard work. But if hard work alone had sufficed, donkeys would have ruled the world long back, and robots would have ruled the world in the present times. There is no doubt that hard work is essential for a fulfilled life. However, what is equally important is direction. We may drive faster and reach the wrong place if we do not follow the right direction.
Society tries to give direction to the entire generation of kids. When we grow, we observe the behaviour of the people around us. Society's preferences and values get reflected in explicit and implicit behaviour. For example, parents in some cases may guide their kids to try for a career option that offers the highest package. On the other hand, they may not be that explicit in their preferences, but through their differential treatment of the poor and rich relatives, they may give this message implicitly to the child that money matters the most in life. The same is the case with powers. When we see people roaming around and people sitting in powerful positions, we get tempted to try to reach similar positions. It is not one instance, but rather such instances take place almost every moment. When so many people repeatedly say the same things, that becomes the gospel truth for us. Our mind consciously and unconsciously accepts them as truth. They keep giving direction to our lives.
For example, in many families, parents are quite obsessed with social validation. When some guests come, they will become the best of their selves in interacting with them, and the moment they leave, they start criticising them. What do kids learn from such behaviour? They learn that social validation is more important than authenticity. One has to appear to be well behaved rather than being good. Similarly, we go to a social function and praise the organisation of the function, and come back and start criticising that. What message have we given to the kids. It is that we do not have to express what we feel, rather we have to calculate and calibrate what we speak. There are hundreds of such instances that take place in homes and society almost every day and the kids learn to be inauthentic and manipulative. They become a true copy of the society they live in. Not only these, but the mass hallucination around the religion and beliefs forms a significant portion of their psyche. They will believe in a particular God and perform certain types of rituals.
Do we realize what we have done to kids with this behaviour? We have distorted their sense of direction. We have placed thick glasses on their eyes in the form of beliefs, inauthenticities, and biases, and they are not able to see the reality. When they can't see reality, how can they find direction? If we are fixated on our biases and the sense of "good" and "bad", how are we going to have empathy with others. Rama could have empathy with even Ravana and Bali. Because he could see the reality. He could see the soul separate from the body. That's probably the highest form of empathy. Leave aside that, we are not able to separate people from their beliefs and biases. We type into different categories based on their belief system. Unless we get rid of our beliefs and biases, how can we have empathy with others? How can we connect to them? In fact, we have become so self-obsessed that we are hardly ever able to connect to even our kids and family members. There is just a functional arrangement of helping each other based on reciprocity, and we do not relate to the aspirations and life purpose of each other, and often dismiss the life purpose of our partners if that does not confirm to our belief system.
If we are tied to these beliefs, biases, and inauthenticities, how are we going to explore what is available for exploration in the known world? How will we develop passion for anything? We will end up doing the job that offers us money because we have learnt from childhood that it is money that matters at the end of the day. We will just waste the whole of our lives in trying to gain the powerful positions because we have never examined the reality of power. We have never examined that power brings a lot of responsibilities, and the "sense of being powerful" is often based on its misuse. Due to these fixations, our life is often misdirected, and we are not able to follow our passions, and slowly our passions turn into hobbies, that too if we are lucky. Else those passions just fade away and we accept our inauthenticities, giving them a fancy name of destiny. Not only that, but the hell we have lived through, we become very keen to pass that on to our kids.
How will a person overburdened with these inauthenticities, beliefs, and biases dare to enter into the domain of the unknown and grow beyond what he knows. How can there be growth? Growth mindset requires that we drop what we know and enter into the domain of the unknown. If I have made money or power as the mission of my life, I would like to explore the most conventional ways of getting the same. That is why most people end up trying the conventional ways and means suggested by society and put their kids on the same path.
Exploration requires a free spirit, and spirit can be free to explore only when it is authentic. It is not tied to the inauthenticities, biases, and beliefs. It is only when we drop these inauthenticities, biases, and beliefs, we are ready to explore. Explore the domain of known by following our passions, the domain of the unknown by having a growth mindset, and exploring fellow human beings by having empathy. Without this exploration, we live only a minuscule part of the range of possibilities we have, and if we do not explore our lives, we end up passing on the ignorance to our kids and make them also bonded labour of their own ignorance and inauthenticities. It's not easy to challenge our own beliefs and inauthenticities, like losing the weight that we have accumulated. However, the moment we become aware of the harm being done to us by these inauthenticities and become aware of the possibilities of living an authentic life, we gather the courage to drop these inauthenticities, and that creates a ripple effect on the whole of the family and people who come into contact.
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