“Walking down a road
When the weather is cold
He never did what was told
But hey
He was just trying to be bold.”
Elders often think the youth (who are generally carefree and have no worries about their lives) to be nutbags. They feel that the kids live in their own free world with gadgets in their hands and a swag, which they think to be a trend among these youngsters.
The pet dialogues of these elders are ‘grow up’, ‘start worrying about life’, ‘how can you be so careless’, ‘don’t do this’, ‘don’t go there’, ‘don’t take a risk’, etc. Actually, they are right in their own way. They have seen the darker shades of life which are filled with hardships. So it may be hard for them to believe how kids can be so chilled out. This probably explains why they feel that the youth is being ignorant about the reality.
However, that’s just one side of the story. If they are right, that doesn’t mean we are in the wrong. We are dead serious about our lives, and we worry about our futures way more than we express. A huge number of startups by young people, amazing works of art, literature and music by the souls of a tender age are a proof of that seriousness. Now here is the twist – our ‘seriousness’ is also fused with fun. This is something we like to exhibit while concealing all the wrinkles on the forehead and the increased heartbeat – just like how all the groundwork in a theater is concealed behind the curtains. When I am alone, I am a crazy guy whose knees become wobbly thinking of the future and the life ahead, but that wobbliness is replaced by a firm self-belief which is earned due to my high self-esteem and the curiosity and hope in the face of a scary future.
Most of us want to follow our dreams and explore untapped possibilities, but often, our parents are severely against this. They want us to follow the herd because they fear the unknown, and their risk-averse nature is quite dominant. But the youth of the 21st century have a curiosity which is high enough to break the shackles of fear and enter the endless horizon. If someone tells us not do something, our minds kick in and say, “Hey, let’s try this out.” Going towards the endless horizon is risky, but the moon would have been a mystery if Neil Armstrong had given into that fear. Mount Everest would remained unconquered if Hillary and Norgay had become the victims of that fear.
Now, many people may be scratching their heads over the fact that I compared mindset of the youth with the greatest explorers of all time. Now that’s the whole point – we, the youth of the 21st century, know that exploring new dimensions is risky, but our bucket of self-confidence is so full that we give into our dreams. At the same time, our hearts create a net to absorb the sorrow of doomed dreams. We are strong enough to bear this burden and move on to explore the new dream.
From this talk of strength, let’s move on to our chilled-out attitude. As a matter of fact, the strength I spoke about earlier is the epicenter for the chilled-out frame of mind. Even in serious times, we try to explore the fun hidden in them. Now, this zeal of exploring fun in a drop-dead serious life is simply indigestible to many people from an older generation, even if our life starts favouring us.
According to many of our parents, we earn happiness by grinding ourselves in hardships. But we want to lubricate hardships with the enjoyment which churns out dimes embedded with creativity. We are human beings who are designed to work creatively and expand horizons. Creativity is the flower which springs out from the zeal to explore. People feel that machines and robots are a competition for humanity, but if we continue to be a herd of sheep, then aren’t we the ones giving competition to robots for their jobs? The bottom line is that we are serious about our lives, but we want to live and enjoy them.