The world, as we see it, is full of people of all ages. The young, the old, the strong, the frail, the happy, the sad, all seem to be living through life in their own suitable ways. However, behind every face is a story untold.
You would expect that the most happy ones are those that seem to be the most exuberant, the ones who seem to be thriving with energy, those who never seem to run out of life in their life, those that are young and new and experiencing life like no one else.
However, like the mirror that only shows the defying beauty of the surface, the smiles on the face of these youngsters is rarely the truth. There are scars of endless battles that these youngsters have won and lost , in the short span of their life, that on the surface may not seem so brutal but may sometimes prove to be fatal. Given the confidence that these youngsters portray, one can never guess the extent of their struggles.
One of the saddest phenomenon that exists today is of the mind battles that youngsters these days go through but fail to express openly or at times even admit that they are facing any problems.
Food for thought:
Has anyone of us stopped to think why these people, who are supposedly the pride of their nations or the future of this world, fall prey to battles that deconstruct their mental state and ruin their peace?
What is it that instils a sense of hopelessness and pessimism in them at an age when they should be bursting with positive energy and viciously vibrant vibes?
Here are few answers to these numerous questions that are digging deep into the roots of our youngsters but no one dares speak out loud.
Tender age and an uncooperative society are a seriously disastrous mismatch that has ruined generations and continues to do so pretty horribly. As we grow up, the people around us try their best to fill us up with hope, happiness and optimism. We consider this world to be good and nothing but the good.
However, as we grow up we start realizing that the icing on the cake was all that was good: the actual cake is stale and pungent. That is when the reality dawns upon us.
We realize that the castle of optimism was all glass and took no time in breaking. The pieces of shattered hope leave deep scars within us: scars of the friends forever who left, scars of the family that didn't understand our passion, scars of the talent that died within us, scars of failures that we were constantly reminded of by the society and so many other such scars that left their imprints for forever.
Here lies the problem
What we, as a society, do not understand is that young people are always riding the roller coaster of emotions which usually runs on the tracks of the past. We look at people’s lives through the telescope of social media and draw comparisons that aren't even accurate.
Seeing people our age vacationing at an exotic location, witnessing our friends build families, we automatically self reflect our lives critically: way more critically than what we need to do. Over thinking, over analysing, over criticizing our failure and undermining our successes and achievements is what leads to this demented sense of hopelessness that is consuming this generation like a plague.
Consciously or unconsciously, we check our life in contrast to those around us, most of which is made available on social media and get this helpless feeling of being a loser. To top it all, most of us youngsters live in a society that has an innate love for focusing on someone’s failures and watch them struggle while dealing with it.
We try to get into schools and universities that are considered the most prestigious by the society: choose careers most respected by the society: choose partners that the society approves of. The price we pay for all this is giving by up our hope. We give up the hope of studying what we want to without being judged: we give up the hope of having our dream careers so as to fit into society’s standards of success: we give up the hope of finding true love just because the society says there is no such thing.
You know how they say “time heals all wounds”. Wrong. Time does not heal wounds. It only teaches us to live with them a little more comfortably and at peace as the time passes by. The ache of rejection by the dream university hurts even after years, only now we know how to hide it by laughing it off instead of crying it out.
However, here is a word of advice for every soul that is suffocating yet smiling. The stories you see on social media are one side of the picture. Everyone is going through one battle or another. The friends vacationing abroad must have had their share of failures and must have lost hope at some point in life. The person building a new family is having the time of his life, but is constantly worried about the future of it. The young generation needs to stop comparing itself to the lives portrayed on social media or the standards set by society!
You being born is a sign of some purpose. Find it instead of chasing the society or tracking the lives of others!
Do not give up before time. Do not fall prey to the society’s traps. Do not lose hope that is within you. Do not die before death comes to you.