“Don’t let your bad side triumph over your good.”
Pragmatic – We often talk about being practical, facing reality, but is that enough? We abandon our hopes and dreams and accept the things the way they are blaming our inability to change them. Is that the definition of being practical? Or are we just avoiding the problems? We have been forced to embrace those principles for long now. So where did that get us? What did it help us obtain? A bigger house? A better car? At the expense of what?. That isn’t helping us safeguard our future when our each and every action is indirectly disintegrating the very elements that sustain us and have made us what we are today.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Being practical is only as good as wearing a face paint only to hide our identity rather taking on the opposition. This so called practical approach isn’t going to help us now. Only thing that is left of it, is to use it as an excuse to let things be as they are. Even confronting the circumstances isn’t enough, it isn’t solving the problems we face. We need to uproot the fundamentals and recreate them to fit the current circumstances. Because when you wake up, you wear a mask, a mask that covers your true identity only to face your day at work. That is commendable but not something that can be revered. You are just running in the same direction of the system, the same money-driven system which has given rise to all these problems we face today.
” Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
So, maybe, its time we stopped being practical and started realizing our dreams, eliminating the thin line between dreams and reality, truly caring for each other and the world that renders our sustenance. May be we need to dream better, be better, change for the better.
“The dogmas of the past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise high with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Hard times are definitely ahead, they can’t be avoided. They are the consequences of our own selfish actions. The only thing we can do is mitigate them. And to make them less severe we need to disenthrall the current ideologies and prevailing fundamentals which have led us to this point, so that we can be better equipped for the future.
Chaos: a state of disorder; a more precise definition based on Chaos Theory: initial conditions(present) determine the forthcoming consequences(future). This implies that the smallest of actions or inaction can eventually trigger a massive phenomenon at any given time or place. Also referred to as the Butterfly Effect.
“Predictability- Does the flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”
The fact remains, these predictions are an effect of underlying conditions, irrespective of how complex the system is. So lets give our best, and start taking actions that really matter. Its time we start listening to the cries that really matter, than heeding only to our selfish cries of vanity.
So re-evaluate your actions, goals and dreams, whether they are just getting a job, or following your passion, identify who you are doing it for, who is the beneficiary, are you truly contributing anything through it, also be aware of the footprints your actions leave on your surroundings, and then see if you can realign your interests not just for yourself, but for your own future, for the future of the coming generation, for the greater good and for the growth of humanity as a species and not as individuals.
