TAARE ZAMEEN PAR

We all came to this world, gifted with innocence.Life was so joyful being a child. We smiled more than 400 times a day. We reveled in the simple pleasures of life, be it indulging ourselves completely in a cone ice cream, dripping down in our fingers, or insouciant trails with nature, where we counted the number of stars in the sky and followed the moon running behind us. What on earth went wrong while we were growing up? While we began to acquire intelligence, we parted ways with innocence. Life has never been so joyful since then. We gradually added baggage to our identity, identifying ourselves with all those we began to look upon. All those which mattered to our life started sketching an image of ourselves with its inevitable, robbing us of the ineffable pleasure while living in the unmistakable lightness of our being. Is this intelligence so precious to merit a trade off with our innocence? Such ruminations often arise whenever I see kids playing around happily in the SIC campus, while I am strutting anxiously across the stairs for my next lecture with my mind filled with thoughts for the upcoming quiz. My mind, however finds its original voice. The truth emerges amidst the clutter. We were born with silence and as we grew up, we lost the silence and were filled with words. We lived in our hearts and as time passed, we moved into our heads. As management students, we can learn so much from our children. The foremost being the simple art of forgetting things. While we were children, we fought with our friends. Such enmity and bitterness was so fugacious, vanishing in thin air whenever we move on to next thing. Once we had expressed it, we were exhausted. We never used to carry residues of anything and we were able to smile so blissfully the next moment. Why did we forget this beautiful skill?

With technology bringing all kinds of negative influence in children’s lives, it appears that they are losing this beautiful trait. Children take pride in being violent. If they lose their temper, they feel that it’s normal — they take pride in it. One who is very aggressive in the classroom, gets more attention than one who is peaceful, isn’t it? So children grow up feeling, ‘‘If I am aggressive, then I have my say’’.

Isn’t it obvious to see that a child is so happy — walking, moving, jumping around and then that same child goes through college to become so sad, upset and depressed! Is this the purpose of our education? Its highly essential that children’s education addresses all these concerns. Only then, children can remain blissfully child like and maybe, we can learn a lesson or two in management from them too.