Once upon a time, there was a bright young, handsome boy, let’s call him Sunshine. Sunshine was hard working, dedicated and determined to “become” something in life. He managed to get a well paying IT job after graduation. After some time, he “settled down” i.e. got married to the woman he didn’t love and had kids after few years.
8 years passed after he started working and now Sunshine is not as bright as Sunset also! He has bald spots and a paunch, is miserable, and works long hours to avoid his nagging wife. He still struggles to fix the codes for clients and every night sleeps with a dream of probable promotion in his eyes.
On one such night, he slept and never woke up again. Sunshine died! Sunshine was very disappointed with God for ending his life so soon and decided to seek answer to God.
He met God and said, “Oh God, why did you take away my life so soon? What went wrong?”
God: “If I had allowed you to continue with your life, what would you have done?”
Sunshine: “I’d have achieved a promotion, would have gained growth and power and a better life for me and my family.”
God: “Dear, I had gifted you the uniqueness, I had given you intelligence, hobbies, creative talents, good looks, and what were you doing with all that? I wanted you to make a difference but What the hell were you doing typing those strange characters and wrecking your brain over some goddamn piece of code for someone sitting zillions of mile away? Which will eventually land up on a dusty server rack in an oblivious back office of some damn company? A bunch of aliens will use it and will crib about it every second week to make your boss call you up in the middle of the night for an urgent fix of the 'severity 1 production issue'! And all this for a job which has eaten you up like termite, but still has kept you in hunt for the promotion, and a corner cabin and control over the lives [appraisals] of some 100 odd people!”
Sunshine was shocked. He said, “But God, I was just doing my job!”
God: You are just another brick in the wall, essential but easily replaceable, justlike wheels in the functioning vehicle. That’s because, you are trained to fit into the existing system and work for the system’s sake and not for our own sake. This training begins right from school days and extends further in high school, college and then the formal corporate world. Your education system is a factory to diminish your uniqueness and produce resources for the corporate world!! It just creates herd and not individuals.”
Sunshine: “That’s the path society showed us, everyone lives their life as per the social norms!! It’s not my fault!”
God: “That’s funny; you all follow the standard flowchart of life.
Get a popular degree
Get a Mundane Job
Get Married
Produce Kids
Raise Kids
Retirement
Repent phase (of not being able to achieve which you always wanted to achieve, of not being able to get that happiness and satisfaction in life which you always wanted, of not being able to do anything different from others )
Quiet Death
That’s It!
God Continued, “These are the fixed steps of life which everyone is expected to follow. It’s so deep rooted in your mentality that just the thought of trying something different generates a lot of anxiety and insecurities. The culprit is Social Conditioning, it can defy my wishes also and can make you humans believe anything, almost ANYTHING.
You don’t deserve this precious life gifted by me. If I allow you to live further, you’ll waste it in a rut and that would be a big insult for my gifts and me.”
Sunshine was in tears.
Sunshine: “Then what should I do with my life?”
God: “Identify your talents, gifts that you have received from me, just do what you enjoy doing andyouwill never work a day in your life! Choose a vocation that encourages your interests and you’d obviously excel in it. Life will be effortless for you then.”
Morning Alarm cries out loudly and Sunshine wakes up, it was a dream, he’s relieved. He gets ready for office and while commuting, listens to radio. Radio started playing the Pink Floyd Song,
We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
Note: This post is dedicated to Vishal (Vivaldi). Thanks Vishal for your Inputs. :)
Vaibhavi
