Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high!
Whenever I try to write a blog, I do a lot of homework ranging from listening to podcasts to reading as many articles in newspapers and the internet to ensure that I do justice to the topic. But this time I just wanted to write my heart out.
What is the noblest profession in our world? This is an age-old question with undisputed answers. People living in a typical Indian family with a classic approach would answer this question in a time that is even faster than M S Dhoni’s stumping. Undoubtedly,8 out of 10 times the person answers Doctor because he saves a life, the rest 2 persons would say army or social worker. You can’t deny these answers because they are great professions that require selflessness, an astronomical amount of dedication, and other innumerable qualities. There is no iota of doubt regarding it.
But are these the only noble professions out there? NO. Every profession is a noble one if the persons involved in it have dignity, remain humble, honest, hardworking and the heart to always work for the betterment of society. You can be anything you want and all you need is to embark on a journey with your soul to wherever it takes you. You can start today and build your expertise in any field you’re interested in and use the knowledge acquired in the future for building a better tomorrow.
Tomorrow according to me is not universal, for a 60-year-old individual tomorrow is merely 10 years away after which the word stands no meaning. But, for you and me (if in case you are born in the 21st century) our tomorrow is not 2030 it is 2070(provided we live for 70 years). We must have a long-sighted approach than our elders.
“Prevention is better than cure” is a proverb that every one of us at one point in time would have heard anywhere or even experienced the consequences of not sticking to it (not to forget the pandemic we are enduring). I am not here to give a discourse on hope, positivity, and all other optimistic things around, as that’s all we talk about 90 percent of the time. There is nothing wrong with it but the real issue is that we end up talking so much that at times we tend to forget why we even started talking. The outcome “we only talk”.
Now the solution is to follow the three-letter mantra “ACT”. Once you start acting on the things which you talk about, hope is what you find everywhere. There are many motivational posters available asking us to think big to be big. There is no rigid way to measure the size of your thoughts but the size of your acts can be assessed by the changes it makes tomorrow.
Acts necessarily need not be big all the time or big at all, any small act can make a big impact on your tomorrow, your descendant’s tomorrow if you could make it reach the precise audience “the children”. Children are the future of tomorrow, they could change the world with their power of thoughts, imagination, creativity, and whatnot. But today as we speak children are getting involved in armed conflicts in Gaza, are forced into child marriage in India, into child prostitution in Thailand, and they are the first victims of climate change. They are suffering for no mistake of theirs. Even though United Nations guarantees the rights to life, survival, and development of the child (which still holds the record as the only bill to be ratified by the maximum number of parties). Are these protected by every country? The answer is No, even though many laws have been made for the welfare of the children in every country, there is a fundamental problem we need to address before ensuring the laws are implemented properly and that is the mentality of adults towards children. We need to be broad-minded in our thinking towards children. It is our responsibility to create an encouraging environment where the child can freely participate and register their views on every topic known to humankind.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
This is a beautiful composition of the Bengali poet, founder of “Visva- Bharati University” Shanti Niketan Rabindranath Tagore where he reiterates on a better tomorrow and the key to achieving that is only possible through children as we are, I believe beyond repair.
How do we ensure that there is no discrimination against children, the best interests of a child are always protected and their views respected? This is a tricky question in which each of us will have unique answers according to our capacities and capability. But there is one thing which all of us can do irrespective of all our ideological differences that is “teach children”. Yes.
Teach them today so that they could be a better human being tomorrow,
Teach them today to ensure they are better policymakers tomorrow,
Teach them today to believe they can be anything they want,
Teach them today to unshackle the chains of society,
Teach them today to break the barriers tomorrow,
Teach them today to spread love, compassion tomorrow,
Teach them today to live in a peaceful, harmonious, and tranquil tomorrow,
Teach them today to pass on this to their children tomorrow.
TEACH THEM…
