Are we a generation of self-centered people
7:59 PM - Posted by Nidhi Singh - 4 comments

Our grandparents had a dozen or so kids and lived a happy life. The expectations were less and the kids didn’t have too many demands. If they could get a decent education and have a circle of friends to play with at the end of the day – they were a happy lot. Kids would study in school and play outside at home. There were large families in general where either the aunts and grandparents took care of the kids or the elder kids took care of the young ones. Raising a kid was never an issue.

Then came our parent’s generation. Don’t you think we had a wonderful childhood without the Nintendo’s and the Wii’s, without the computers and a hundred choices if you want to buy a bicycle? Like my husband was saying the other day, having a straight bar bicycle was the highlight of the neighborhood. You were the king if you owned a bicycle like that. The trend became that our parents started sticking to the policy of having two kids – a policy spread by the government rather aggressively because of the growing population in India that it wanted to keep under control, with a very effective slogan “Hum do humare do” – literally meaning we two, our two!. People also realized that they could educate and provide better for two kids rather than for half a dozen. So the so-called policy became the new mantra among the urban educated crowds in India. The parents got a life (over and above taking care of kids) and we got our Lego’s and Barbie’s – everyone was happy.

Jump to our generation and suddenly one is the new two. No more two kids – no more people praying for a girl if they were already blessed with a boy to carry on the family name or for a boy if Laxshmi (The arrival of a girl child is equated to the arrival of the goddess of money) has already graced the house. The argument in favor of the notion is that the times are very expensive. And I don’t disagree with that. Sure, from the very time the kid is born till the time she finishes college, it is a series of expense after expense. We want to give our kids the best of all resources. Be it monetary or time. With mostly all husbands and wives working, there is a shortage of time for sure. We wait for the time to be right when we would be able to give the second kid the same amount of time and care and comfort that we could offer to the first one. Some people also believe that however fair you might try to be, you would always have a slight inclination towards one of the kids and sparing a kid from that is also a factor for them to decide on sticking to one.

Hmmm! Agree with most of it. But here is another point of view. As soon as the kid is born, does she ask for the fairy tale nursery, for the best available stroller and the GAP dresses? Does she ask you to throw her a dream-like first birthday party with a guest list spanning the who’s who of the town? The kid might be equally happy (and successful) in a decent public school or an affordable private one (in case you are staying in a country/area that don’t have good public schools). I feel, to a large extent, a lot of the expenses are just status symbols for us or our vision of the perfect world that has nothing to do with what the kid’s upbringing would actually cost us. A couple of hours (daily) of quality time spent with a kid is much more than all the joy a Nintendo would bring him (Agreed that things might be much different when the child is in her teens or nearing that)… but the point is that in those two or three hours every day you can instill the right values in the child that would show him that love and care and family are much more important than monetary things. I understand peer pressure but I guess you do understand the gist of what I want to say.

Or, are our lives too hectic... are we a bunch of self-centered people who want to live and enjoy our own lives for a change and not spend all our time raising kids. It means a lot of additional responsibilities and lot of time and devotion. And not to forget, a lot of money. What we can spend on a bigger TV/car or a vacation, how about that dream house I wanted to buy – a three bedroom with a modern kitchen (with an island of course) and a porch, a garden where I can ask the landscaper to come and help me make it a house out of a pottery barn catalog. Time, of course, is another contributor to the whole debate. With one kid only, we don’t have time for 'us'. How do you fit another kid in the equation? As a friend very aptly put it - I think we are a generation sandwiched between our modest upbringing and the modern life exposure! 'Cause the irony is, that we understand the need of a second child but are not able to take the plunge due to the life that we are leading. May be we would have been better off if we were truly homely or truly career minded... but we are both (or at least trying to be)!!

I think the love and closeness you can experience with a sibling can very rarely be seen with a cousin. And the sole reason is that in today’s times cousins don’t live together, and don't even meet often enough. Only kids can be pretty lonely and even more so as they grow up. It’s difficult for them to learn the concept of putting others before themselves and hence, are more likely to become self-absorbed individuals. As Katy Abel explains in her article, only kids do not experience the competitiveness that kids with siblings do and parents have to work extra hard to provide them with the stimulation, camaraderie and competitiveness that comes naturally with siblings. Parents also have a hard time keeping the kid grounded since they are always the center of attraction and are used to getting their own way.

My brother and I are very close and I know I always have a person who I can turn to in any circumstance and I hope he knows the same. Do we have the right to deny our kids of that comfort zone?



Sliding Doors
10:06 PM - Posted by Nidhi Singh - 5 comments

Does the ‘what if?’ question cross your mind every now and then. What if I had studied harder… what if I had summoned the courage to propose to that girl… what if I had not missed the train for my first interview… what if I had picked up the phone and dialed my sister’s number all those years ago…

I saw a movie called ‘Sliding Doors’ this weekend… it had Gwyneth Paltrow starring in it (Which is besides the point but she is one of the most elegant women in the industry and I wished to mention her here :O) ). Anyway, this movie traces two paths which the heroine’s life could have taken: the first had the protagonist take a subway train and other is the one where the doors slide shut and she misses it. One very simple action: but something that could change the very course of life.

Do you feel that your life would have taken a different path if you would have taken one different decision at some point of time? Well, here is one ‘what if’ question from my side. What if there actually are worlds where the consequences of your different decisions exist.

And, what if it was not just in your imagination? MWI, or many world interpretations, is a branch of quantum physics. It says that there are a very large, perhaps infinite, number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen, or could possibly have happened, in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in some other universe(s). There are parallel yous and mes somehow existing in the same space and time that we live in but normally not seen or sensed by us. In these universes, choices and decisions are being made at the very instant you are choosing and deciding. Only the outcomes are different, leading to different but similar worlds. If a universe can be imagined, it exists.

David Deutsch, a research fellow at the Department of Astrophysics, Oxford, and a professor at the University of Texas, tells us: I think it's safe to say that there are a very large, probably infinite, number of these universes. Many of them are very different from ours, but some of them differ only in some minute detail like the position of a book on a table, and are identical in every other respect.

So the very act of keeping a book in a certain way might be a reason of a totally different world – probably for you or for someone else. Say your brother, who is a confused soul, is looking for a path in life. He sees the photography book you kept facing up (and not facing down) and realizes his life’s purpose. He was a lost person and would probably have lived off you had he not realized his vision. Now you can find other uses for the time, energy and resources that you might have spend on him, trying to show him light. So one small action, and it can change so many lives in totality.

When I was a teenager, I read a book called ‘One’ by Richard Bach. It did not make that much sense to me then, but it did leave a deep impression. It had exploited the same idea where the protagonist and his wife end up visiting the different worlds that represented their lives, had they taken some different decisions / actions at some point in time. He wonders in the novel:

"I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?"

I wish I could travel to these many-worlds and see the different courses my life would have taken had I studied harder, or had I not broken the trust of a friend by telling my best friend what this girl had confided in me in grade nine, or if I had been there for my parents and brother more when they needed me and not being wrapped up in my own self-centered world.

I don’t know if the parallel worlds, or many worlds or whatever you might call them actually exist, but I know for sure that contemplating how much impact simple decisions or actions can make in life might force us to think and act more responsibly. Some things might not be in our hands, like Gwyneth Paltrow missing that train in that movie, though they end up shaping your life too; the real question is about the things that you do control.

When I was a kid, my father (who is an idealist and greatly into Indian mythology and values, again not relevant here but worth a mention) told me a story about Chanakya. A guru (teacher) in his gurukul(school) saw his hand and told him that he didn’t have a good fate line. He asked the sage, where the line was supposed to be. As he was being shown the line, Chanakya pulled out his dragger and carved the line on his hand saying, “I make my own fate.”

As I mentioned earlier, there are surely things that are not in your control, like you meeting an accident or missing an exam because the train got derailed etc., but what you do after that is what makes or breaks you. YOU are the master of your destiny. YOU and only YOU are responsible for what your life turns out to be. It is very easy to convince yourself that you did not have the right opportunities, upbringing or company. I totally pity people who say that their stars are currently not in place or their guruji has asked them to wait for a while or worst of all – it is their destiny. People care about what the society would say or their friends would say and hence never gather up the courage to take things in their hand and work towards their happiness. I would say – THAT IS YOUR DESTINY. That is all GEETA has been preaching for centuries and what we need to understand – “Karmanye vadhika raste, ma phaleshu kadachana!” In layman’s terms it means that do your duty and take action without worrying about the outcomes or the results.

"Whether You Think You Can or Can't, You're Right"--Henry Ford

So what are your 'What ifs'...