Failed Dreams

The newspapers and media (social media, too) is full of anecdotes of people who dreamed big and succeeded. But nobody writes about the failed dreams. It is simple, perhaps, that people would not like to read about people who have failed. Or is it the media’s perception?

But despite these success stories, society as a whole does not want to emulate these people. What is the fear all about?

I was talking to one of my friends in an NGO, and she said, behind every success story, there are hundred failure stories, and thousands of horror stories. I asked her about the source, and she said, ‘no body ventured to write the first failure story, and the project has not been conceptualised since then’.

The other friend from the same school of thought, continued, looking in the void, ‘when you write your CV, you don’t mention that you’re fired from so and so organisation; it is full of your achievements.’

The group was now coming into a live discussion, and the third added, ‘look at those reports, and those are full of achievements and success stories. In the prelude, it is written that we have learnt from our failures and mistakes, and there is a full stop there. It is written as a humble style, and nothing more.’

Before the fourth could add, my first friend said, ‘it does not make business sense, dear. Look, if we were to write to the donors that we spent the money you had given but failed to give the results! The whole world would fall apart; the people, apart from thinking about their funding strategy, would term us as most imprudent.’ After a while, she added, only the fools tell about their failures and the whole world laughs at you.’

Is it an unwritten code, societal stigma, or something deeply inherent in an opaque community that mistakes and failures are to be canned-not open for discussion? If the failures are not put on the table, are not discussed, we would not be able to analyse them, and not know the reasons for their failures. The uncharted territory would remain uncharted.

Though failures are not listed, chronicled, eulogised, booked, and filmed-in short no money made through this exercise, the community knows that ‘behind every successful person there is a long list of unsuccessful people fading into the background colour. Is it true? Who knows!

But one thing is clear, failures terrifies you. If you jump a wall, break a leg (instead of the wall), the people might laugh at your broken leg (age is always reminded to you-if you are a child, it is too early to jump; if you are old, it is too late; and if you are young, ‘don’t you have anything else ‘fruitful’ to do than this at this age?)

Does that deter you? I mean, the supposition that people could be laughing at you in case of failure? So what? What if the people laugh? Does not your school/college teach you about the emotional intelligence? Family should be the right place, and friends the next where this teaching should be done. But either it is not (done) or the opposite environment is created. If so (creation of an enabling environment), the family, relatives and the friends need to nurture dreams that have all the potentials to be grand failures.

And one day we should write about failed dreams, and what went wrong. And instead of panicking, sulking, and all those negative emotions, we should be raising a toast to the failed dreams, not because they have failed, but because the person dreamed of the impossible (factors like resources, capacities, ahead of time etc), failed and the story was documented, family and friends said, ‘it is okay, it is no big deal that your dream has failed; you tried, but more than that, you dreamed of impossible, and no ordinary mortal would have dreamed of that!”

Average Dreams

Average Dreams

Parents have dreams. They dream about their children. Most of the time these dreams manifest their own dreams unfulfilled. Like, “I wanted to be doctor but could not (because of innumerable non-existing factors) so I want my son/daughter to be a doctor”; or, “I wanted to be an engineer but could not so I want my son/daughter to be one”. Or still, “I am a doctor/engineer and I want my son/daughter to be one!”

Parents, at least I know of, do not dream of their children to be, say, artists, painters, players (player is a person who plays any XYZ sports; cricketer is one who plays CRICKET!), social worker (times though are changing!), a good bus conductor (in our country, not even a music conductor!), a good driver (a strict no-no to motor sports, too), a good carpenter, a good baker, a good chef, and a farmer (even a farmer does not want his/her son/daughter to be a farmer, and obvious too!). As if these trades are not required in the life! Do we need more doctors? Which means we do not have a good health education for preventive health care? Perhaps; do we need more engineers? Does that mean we need good engineers to carry out banking, stock broking, operational management, and retail management? We certainly need engineers to build roads, canals, highways, drainage lines etc but along with them we need a lot of others who make it happen, and work to keep them running, too.

“Mumbai generates waste to the tune of approximately 7025 tonnes per day (2007 figures and estimated to increase to 9000 tonnes per day in 2008). The waste consists of: 5025 tonnes of mixed waste (bio-degradable and recyclable); 2000 tonnes of debris and silt; the biodegradable waste is made up of vegetables and fruit remainders, leaves, eggshells etc”

But more than these, we would not able to survive and exist if there was/is no farmer; the life would be difficult without a carpenter, and a baker; evenings would be mournful without artists, musicians, and weekends would be spent lying on bed if there were no players to watch (cricket numbers can be crunched during office hours!). But still, the parents do not dream of these vocations for their children.

It could be related to the numbers and percentages that relate to good life. Have you seen any doctor struggling to make his/her ends meet? I haven’t, and if you have, please let me know (I would like to interview her/him for what went wrong, and where!). What would be the percentage of engineers unemployed? What are the chances of an employer picking an artist over an engineer in, say, retail operations? Or say in social work? So it could be related to the “never failure” to earn an average (and at times decent) salary/pay whether in the training/education that s/he got or in any other vocation; it is guaranteed, no fuss, there is a steady flow of money, and in all the other vocations, there is or perceived uncertainty of a steady flow of money.

That also explains the double educational work and hours the players, artists, musicians etc have to devote in the country. The chances of the failure, and getting a decent pay is less, and so the parents ensure that (instil the thinking that do whatever you want but complete your degree) their sons/daughters have “GOOD EDUCATION”.  Which means, sports, fine arts, theatre etc are not good education?

But let’s debate that later, and come back to the dreams parents nurture (seeding in selves first, and then enforce upon their sons/daughters). Parents do not fantasize about big dreams (one parent told me that we need to be practical, what that means, I don’t know) but they have “average dreams”, and the story should end there.

But as the parents do the most of the dreaming their frame of reference is dated. It is not in sync with the times they live in (as their children, they also live in the modern times, but frame referred is from their college days!).

Why can’t the parents live their life and leave the dreaming of the future (of their children) to their children? Is it because they have nothing else to do? Is it because they haven’t acquired any hobbies to follow? Reading, writing, music, gardening, trekking, playing (a person I know told me that he used to play in younger days, and he is just thirty five!) or simply cooking (a male gender activist I know spends time reading, preparing, for the workshops he conducts, and his wife does the vegetable shopping and cooking) Cooking is a chore, and at the same time it is an art, and science but most of the people look at it more simplistically (It has rendered males into gender sensitive, gender balanced and gender rogues category)!   

In order that children start thinking about their dreams, and not merely adopting the average dreams of their parents as their own, parents need to be freed from the paranoia that if they stop thinking about their children, if they do not “plan the dreams” of their children, the children would be doomed!        

 
Till then, let’s live with the average dreams.

an ant and a tree

an ant and a tree

Good dreams and bad dreams  

Our dreams are conceptualised by a few individuals and institutions. The concepts are tossed in the air, and left to float. As the ideas hang in the air for quite long, we read, internalise and then own them as our own. So after a while we start desiring about those dreams, and loose eons of good sleep over not able to fulfil these dreams.

Two things that come up in my mind, let me start with the first: are these our own dreams? When I was young did I dream about it? For example, while on my way to Mumbai from Nasik, I read the hoarding saying ‘impossible dreams made possible’ showing ‘home loans and car loans’ It implied that the bank knew about my (and my other class fellows’) dreams. It is not the only bank telling you that your big home-2-3bhk apartments, bungalow, second home, and all that can be made possible with a small loan from the bank.

And mind you, we could really be dreaming about driving in a car to our own house, and drinking tea, and relaxing on the sofa. The picture perfect!

But are these our dreams? If the answer is affirmative, then rest assured, the banks will have a good top line-bottom line (and all those pretty figures) and you will be spending more time in the office working to augment your earnings, and at home, working on your finances.

If the answer is affirmative, and it is, it means we have stopped dreaming about our own dreams, and outsourced these to the financial institutions, at a premium. It also means we have been horded into believing that all our dreams are common-without any individual characteristic attached to the dream. It also means we have stopped thinking about ourselves and left it to others to think about the most important things in our life. Pathetic?     

The second question is more fundamental, and it pertains to the changing definitions, perceptions, concepts of the dreams, and, this is paramount, the reality-check on the access to homes!

During our growing years we all lived in homes, and never dreamt of having our own homes (at least I did not). For every individual home is the need, (where one goes after working in the field, office, or spending time with friends and relatives) and as good as or on par with a square meal. One doesn’t dream about day-to-day needs unless these have become exotic, too sparse to acquire, and hard to find.

One needs a car to commute to work place, and if the public transport is good, there is no need of using a car. But even where the public transport is bad, as in Mumbai (getting into the local is bad but getting out is worse!) the unidirectional traffic renders the use of car useless. So buying and keeping the car parked at your place is a luxury, and a liability.

Here we are not discussing the utility of the car as a commuting medium. No, we can do it later; owning a car is a dream looks like we have become barren at the ideating level.

Over the years, have we substituted insular ambitions with dreams? Larger houses, bigger cars, second homes, and all these are insular ambitions (or these were a few years back). Are we confusing insular ambition with dreams?  (This is for debate!)

If the ‘state of affairs’ has become so that we have to dream about a house (as most of the people from cities and metros do), it is serious, and as a community, we are doomed. We could be industrious, but it tells on the governance and the policies of the state that the needs have been turned into dreams. Today I was reading Hindustan Times, in which Dhirendra Kumar writes, “Naidu pointed to the obvious anomaly that despite a housing shortage of 19 million units, there are around 11.09 million houses vacant in urban areas.”

So against this backdrop if we dream about a house, it is a bad dream, if at all we dream about a house! For, we are forced to dream about the house.

Our energies, at least the youth of the country’s talents should be channelized for more-better-diverse dreams. Those dreams could be anything, from gardening, to playing an instrument, from writing to scaling the mountains. These are good dreams, and a culture needs to be cultivated, nurtured where the youth is free to think and decide about her/his dreams. Not that the youths are not doing this, but the percentage could be minuscule while the vast majority is moving with a monkey on the back on a railed road, boot-straps stringed to the rails.