thanks a lot for your response,

One very striking point you have made is highlighting the difference between ‘loving what you do, and learning to love what you have to do”.
‘Labour of Love’ as it is called is what will bring in true productivity of any kind.

like you say let’s hope the times ahead bring us the opportunities for the achievement of this

Sultana

Thanks a ton for choosing to write on the wonderful topic of leading children to their passion. This is a topic very close to my heart and it both excites me and pains me at the same time. It excites me to think of the potential that there is for improvement. We have a lot of work to do. It pains me to think that there are millions of kids who suffer from Monday morning blues every Monday of their life only because their parents (and society) did not let them listen to their heart and pursue their passion (or even did not let them find out what they would have loved doing!). Sometimes, of course, the children themselves may have not had the courage and stamina to stand up against their family and refuse to become yet another run-of-the-mill engineer/doctor.

A point that I’d like to make here is that India is probably at the bottom of the pile in terms of diversity in career goals. Random programs on Discovery/Nat Geo/Animal Planet/History/Travel and Tourism Channels confirms that there is no dearth of ideas on what one can do for a living…apart from picking up the stethoscope or a screw-driver or a calculator or…well…a keyboard. a) We are a country mad for money and will only take the path that is proven to be financially rewarding. b) We are anyway subjected to herd-mentality and want to do what others are doing. c) We are scared to take too many risks and cannot imagine doing anything that society might label as infradig

But, come to think of it, I think we have been brave when it comes to business. We have gotten innovative and tried a lot of things in the field of business. But these accomplishments have generally come from the richer strata of society and a few brilliant minds from other layers. The good news, we have to admit, is that things are definitely changing. I find that a lot of parents are now open to expose their children to sports, music, dance and other artistic pursuits. But the bad news is that the reasons, arguably, are not something we can be proud of. I suspect that most parents are open to such things because they’ve seen prodigies from these fields make it big and secretly believe that their child might join the league and be famous one day. The joy that their children are likely to experience is perhaps the last thing on the parents’ minds. Recently, I watched a program where a woman-achiever spoke about how her mom put her in a Bharathanatyam class because she (her mom) wanted to learn it as a child but couldn’t. The mother was living her dream through her daughter. But I was amused when the lady said that she finally found her calling in another form of dance (from east India) 14 years later…when she was 24 or so! That was when she began to enjoy dance and went on win laurels from across the world.

I think there are a few of us who begin to learn to love whatever we do….but I am not sure if that’s always the solution.

In a place like India, the first problem we face is in figuring out what are the various things we can pursue! We are not even aware of the possibilities. We first need help with that. We need an encyclopedia of career choices that we can explore. The next thing is that even if we find our “calling” and are not distracted by anything else, we then need expert advice on how to pursue it. I, for example, wanted to be an astronaut (among a million other things) when I was a kid…it may have been just a fascination for outer space…but I never got beyond forcefully declaring “I am going to be an astronaut!”. But I strongly suspect that I may have ended up being one had I been egged on by an adult who knew what to do. (Thank your stars that I did not find such a Guru…for that would have led to the disappearance of the expression, “Thank your stars” )

Anyway, I know I am rambling on like a mad woman with access to a rare captive audience. Maybe I should wind up by saying that things are looking much better for us with the introduction of new age schools that are refusing to take the usual path of education and exposing their children to more and more possibilities. Long live the new age schools and long live parents who are facilitating but letting their children think for themselves.

Wow, I love your words. Khalil Gibran is a true master of words. His words indeed take me into a different plane. I truly wish that every child grows up to pursue her/his dreams and is given an opportunity to do so.

You could not have touched my heart-strings more ……… Gibran’s mystical poetry simply takes one to a plane akin to the cosmos…….!

“For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams”

WOW….! How much one has to experience on a spiritual plane, how enlightened you must become to be able to write this………… What my dream is for the child of today to ‘conciously’ decide to take up the pen and write something to match this……… or excel it…………Might take a lifetime, but its worth it.