What next, they ask me? What next, I ask myself a lot of times. I know just one answer to it, which does no justice to the question itself. 'I don't know.'
What are you going to be in 5 years? In ten years? Fifteen. Fifty. I still tell them 'I don't know'.
The vague outline of vision that education offers is so faint that sometimes I have to trace it and chase it around to find out where I'm off to. To meet whom? To earn? Or to learn? These are just only a very few of the questions that keep popping up in my head.
Life goes on. I was enrolled into a school when I barely learnt how to walk properly before teachers asked me to 'sit down' in a place. Just when I was learning how language and sounds roll under my tongue, I was asked to keep quiet. (I'm still told the same, mind you.)Maybe it was for the good, I was trained in the basic 'skills of civilization'.. like every other kid. Ran through primary school, secondary, senior secondary and now college. But if I look at the net result as to what I have learnt and what I want to be... I think I'll have to un-'study' most of what I was taught.
('Don't talk back to your elders.' - So, what if they are teaching me something wrong? What if I'm being stuffed with something I don't want to know if I did know how it would lead.)
So, what do we learn? Or do we learn anything at all? Do we just study, score marks, get a well-paid job which most of us hate to be in, get married, 'settle down', reproduce, get old, die. Why do we have this pattern? Why do we have these definitive words like career, salary and life-partner? Why not unconventional ones like dancing, music, farming, one-night stands and hiking? When people ask me what I'm going to be doing next, I say.. 'Oh, Finish studies, work for a year or two, study for another two years, start my own architectural firm'.. when what I actually want to do is to let all of this go. Keeping ambitions aside and working towards a goal or what not.. I've probably forgotten how to live.
I want to attend or go to an educational 'system' which lets me enjoy the freedom I already possess, I want a 'job' where I don't want to sit staring at a laptop screen for 8 hours straight when all my heart lies in the last few lines of the book I read that morning on the train, I want to fall in love with someone who is willing to spend time on crossword puzzles, tea and sufi music- not through a profile that talks about his height, weight et cetera. Is that who one is? What happened to the soul one had? Knock Knock. I'll be surprised if someone does open a door to that one.
The saddest part of it all is to know you're on a path that you don't want to be in. The problem lies in staying on this path that you like and are comfortable with and not on the one you would love and feel completely passionate about. Where 'identities' such as doctor, engineer, architect, farmer holds no meaning. Where craziness, joy, love, kind, stupid are the probable tags... and I want to live there in that world where salaries don't contain any meaning, where educational qualifications mean nothing... where only what one holds, loves and stands up for makes sense.
I'm not there yet, but I know I'm changing tracks. It's going to be difficult but to learn to live in the moment is a long term dream I hold, as paradoxical as it may seem. Next time someone asks me what I am : I hope to answer the question to myself first.
What am I going to do?
Roam through roads I haven't set foot on yet. Travel. Read. Write. Design. Sing in public washrooms. Eat farm cheese. Play Frisbee with my dog. Break a couple of roads. Get into a bar fight. Fall in love. Dream. Sleep on bare ground staring at the stars.
What am I going to do?
I'm going to live.
~ Hemu
What are you going to be in 5 years? In ten years? Fifteen. Fifty. I still tell them 'I don't know'.
The vague outline of vision that education offers is so faint that sometimes I have to trace it and chase it around to find out where I'm off to. To meet whom? To earn? Or to learn? These are just only a very few of the questions that keep popping up in my head.
Life goes on. I was enrolled into a school when I barely learnt how to walk properly before teachers asked me to 'sit down' in a place. Just when I was learning how language and sounds roll under my tongue, I was asked to keep quiet. (I'm still told the same, mind you.)Maybe it was for the good, I was trained in the basic 'skills of civilization'.. like every other kid. Ran through primary school, secondary, senior secondary and now college. But if I look at the net result as to what I have learnt and what I want to be... I think I'll have to un-'study' most of what I was taught.
('Don't talk back to your elders.' - So, what if they are teaching me something wrong? What if I'm being stuffed with something I don't want to know if I did know how it would lead.)
So, what do we learn? Or do we learn anything at all? Do we just study, score marks, get a well-paid job which most of us hate to be in, get married, 'settle down', reproduce, get old, die. Why do we have this pattern? Why do we have these definitive words like career, salary and life-partner? Why not unconventional ones like dancing, music, farming, one-night stands and hiking? When people ask me what I'm going to be doing next, I say.. 'Oh, Finish studies, work for a year or two, study for another two years, start my own architectural firm'.. when what I actually want to do is to let all of this go. Keeping ambitions aside and working towards a goal or what not.. I've probably forgotten how to live.
I want to attend or go to an educational 'system' which lets me enjoy the freedom I already possess, I want a 'job' where I don't want to sit staring at a laptop screen for 8 hours straight when all my heart lies in the last few lines of the book I read that morning on the train, I want to fall in love with someone who is willing to spend time on crossword puzzles, tea and sufi music- not through a profile that talks about his height, weight et cetera. Is that who one is? What happened to the soul one had? Knock Knock. I'll be surprised if someone does open a door to that one.
The saddest part of it all is to know you're on a path that you don't want to be in. The problem lies in staying on this path that you like and are comfortable with and not on the one you would love and feel completely passionate about. Where 'identities' such as doctor, engineer, architect, farmer holds no meaning. Where craziness, joy, love, kind, stupid are the probable tags... and I want to live there in that world where salaries don't contain any meaning, where educational qualifications mean nothing... where only what one holds, loves and stands up for makes sense.
I'm not there yet, but I know I'm changing tracks. It's going to be difficult but to learn to live in the moment is a long term dream I hold, as paradoxical as it may seem. Next time someone asks me what I am : I hope to answer the question to myself first.
What am I going to do?
Roam through roads I haven't set foot on yet. Travel. Read. Write. Design. Sing in public washrooms. Eat farm cheese. Play Frisbee with my dog. Break a couple of roads. Get into a bar fight. Fall in love. Dream. Sleep on bare ground staring at the stars.
What am I going to do?
I'm going to live.
~ Hemu
Image from the internet :
