I often meet young writing enthusiasts who do not write, singers who do not sing, and music and sports lovers who do little about their passion. When I myself started writing seven years ago, I found it disturbing that most of us are comfortable being perpetual "consumers" and rarely try to "create" something.
After all, everyone has a creative hobby -- books, music, sport, movies, food, and so on. The unwillingness to create and explore, despite having hobbies and interests, comes from an ingrained belief: education should lead to a career, not creation.
It takes a good amount of dedication to go head-over-heels for Game of Thrones and memorize the latest music track, or to sit and watch an entire IPL match out of sheer passion. But to be able to survive a life in which we don't even come close to taking the initiative to create and innovate is a failure of education.
Even kids love drawing on sand and making toy houses. Humans naturally want to use what they know and feel to create ideas, value and products. But this urge is culturally suppressed as we grow up, even though age makes us more capable of finding long-lasting hobbies which could have inspired useful creation.
This lack of initiative in even activities of our own choice is so widespread that we don't realize it's scary.
Very few of us take initiative to create because we do not value our areas of interest enough. We like to treat academic and professional work as more sacrosanct than our own hobbies.
So sacred in fact, that such work seems larger than daily life. Those who accidentally love such work are called "nerds" -- somewhat socially disrespectful.
A guitarist, for example, is always cool in social circles. But he would be a nerd in a guitar school if he fondly reads a book about guitars: because at a guitar school, that is "academic work", not a "hobby". Similarly, a writing enthusiast who spends the day writing would invite admiration or mockery, depending on whether he is a student of engineering or journalism.
Distinguishing so regularly between "work" and "hobby" is easy because very few of us get to do activities that can qualify as both. Not just the "nerds" who bother to convert hobbies into creation, each of us always has an ambition - a goal to create value for self and others. Still, most of us end up leading quite ordinary lives: doing work we don't really find happiness in, for someone and with people we don't like, often looking forward to the weekend rather than Monday.
We are socially trained, firstly, to dislike work because it must be uncool and joyless, and secondly, to let go of what we like most because it's too lowly to lead to a career. When this happens, there's nothing left to actually love enough to be able to create and innovate.
The result is the first line of this article: young writing enthusiasts who do not write, singers who do not sing, music and sports lovers who have let their passions go.
We want life, but we need work. If we could find the kind of work that we want as much as we want life, we wouldn't end up looking for that elusive goal called "work-life balance". We are never taught that when work and hobby combine, creation happens, and life can be great fun.
Personal ambitions -- which can actually drive us to take initiative -- are always in conflict with the need to seek acceptance among peer groups. Ordinariness, after all, is "cool", and taking the initiative to come out of that trap is "nerdy". It's cool to use Facebook to show you checked in at an airport and to post a selfie when you meet a friend. Yet, for running a satirical website in my early years that entertained thousands of readers, and for writing posts that generated great discussions, I have been called "idle" and "jobless" by people who spend their day scrolling down the Facebook news feed or doing random YouTube searches.
Make no mistake, scrolling down the news feed or watching movies all day long are pretty much creative activities. Consumption is the first stage towards creation. But the big problem is that creation isn't really on the agenda for most people. (Often, their statements reflect that even consumption isn't on their agenda: "I feel so bad I did nothing today, I watched this TV series the entire day.")
Being ordinary all the time, yet ambitious, is not really a clever combination. The comfort with ordinariness is dangerous, as it results in low productivity and self-initiative among youth.
Our education system is creating ambition, but our education culture is not teaching us how to fight ordinariness to manage our lives, be in control. Our education system is giving us content, but our education culture is not giving us the power and imagination to create and come out of the ordinary.
Creators survive because of their own perseverance, not because their immediate social circles make their life easy. It's easier to conform to the curse of ordinariness, than to discover the glory of innovation and initiative.
To fight ordinariness requires us to look within and not blame the system. Everyone has a creative hobby or academic areas they truly love. "Hobby" and "work" can always come together seamlessly, if only one shifts perspectives.
Today, with the option to create a website if nothing else, the first step to create value is easier than ever before. Social media and the internet are a brilliant platform to convert passions into popularity, satisfaction, social impact, money, or whatever else one wants.
College students doing something about their interests, or doing volunteer work -- not for certificates but because they love to do it -- are always heartening to see.
With proper intervention at school and college level, more people can be motivated to create value out of hobbies, and feel accepted for doing the same. Taking initiative needs to become cool. Academics and hobbies must mix seamlessly, and a career should be seen as doing what you love, not as a sequel to academics, not as work that must be joyless.
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After all, everyone has a creative hobby -- books, music, sport, movies, food, and so on. The unwillingness to create and explore, despite having hobbies and interests, comes from an ingrained belief: education should lead to a career, not creation.
It takes a good amount of dedication to go head-over-heels for Game of Thrones and memorize the latest music track, or to sit and watch an entire IPL match out of sheer passion. But to be able to survive a life in which we don't even come close to taking the initiative to create and innovate is a failure of education.
To be able to survive a life in which we don't even come close to taking the initiative to create and innovate is a failure of education.
Even kids love drawing on sand and making toy houses. Humans naturally want to use what they know and feel to create ideas, value and products. But this urge is culturally suppressed as we grow up, even though age makes us more capable of finding long-lasting hobbies which could have inspired useful creation.
This lack of initiative in even activities of our own choice is so widespread that we don't realize it's scary.
***
Very few of us take initiative to create because we do not value our areas of interest enough. We like to treat academic and professional work as more sacrosanct than our own hobbies.
So sacred in fact, that such work seems larger than daily life. Those who accidentally love such work are called "nerds" -- somewhat socially disrespectful.
A guitarist, for example, is always cool in social circles. But he would be a nerd in a guitar school if he fondly reads a book about guitars: because at a guitar school, that is "academic work", not a "hobby". Similarly, a writing enthusiast who spends the day writing would invite admiration or mockery, depending on whether he is a student of engineering or journalism.
Very few of us take initiative to create because we do not value our areas of interest enough.
Distinguishing so regularly between "work" and "hobby" is easy because very few of us get to do activities that can qualify as both. Not just the "nerds" who bother to convert hobbies into creation, each of us always has an ambition - a goal to create value for self and others. Still, most of us end up leading quite ordinary lives: doing work we don't really find happiness in, for someone and with people we don't like, often looking forward to the weekend rather than Monday.
We are socially trained, firstly, to dislike work because it must be uncool and joyless, and secondly, to let go of what we like most because it's too lowly to lead to a career. When this happens, there's nothing left to actually love enough to be able to create and innovate.
The result is the first line of this article: young writing enthusiasts who do not write, singers who do not sing, music and sports lovers who have let their passions go.
We want life, but we need work. If we could find the kind of work that we want as much as we want life, we wouldn't end up looking for that elusive goal called "work-life balance". We are never taught that when work and hobby combine, creation happens, and life can be great fun.
Ordinariness... is "cool", and taking the initiative to come out of that trap is "nerdy". It's cool to use Facebook to show you checked in at an airport...
Personal ambitions -- which can actually drive us to take initiative -- are always in conflict with the need to seek acceptance among peer groups. Ordinariness, after all, is "cool", and taking the initiative to come out of that trap is "nerdy". It's cool to use Facebook to show you checked in at an airport and to post a selfie when you meet a friend. Yet, for running a satirical website in my early years that entertained thousands of readers, and for writing posts that generated great discussions, I have been called "idle" and "jobless" by people who spend their day scrolling down the Facebook news feed or doing random YouTube searches.
Make no mistake, scrolling down the news feed or watching movies all day long are pretty much creative activities. Consumption is the first stage towards creation. But the big problem is that creation isn't really on the agenda for most people. (Often, their statements reflect that even consumption isn't on their agenda: "I feel so bad I did nothing today, I watched this TV series the entire day.")
Being ordinary all the time, yet ambitious, is not really a clever combination. The comfort with ordinariness is dangerous, as it results in low productivity and self-initiative among youth.
Our education system is creating ambition, but our education culture is not teaching us how to fight ordinariness to manage our lives, be in control.
Our education system is creating ambition, but our education culture is not teaching us how to fight ordinariness to manage our lives, be in control. Our education system is giving us content, but our education culture is not giving us the power and imagination to create and come out of the ordinary.
Creators survive because of their own perseverance, not because their immediate social circles make their life easy. It's easier to conform to the curse of ordinariness, than to discover the glory of innovation and initiative.
***
To fight ordinariness requires us to look within and not blame the system. Everyone has a creative hobby or academic areas they truly love. "Hobby" and "work" can always come together seamlessly, if only one shifts perspectives.
Today, with the option to create a website if nothing else, the first step to create value is easier than ever before. Social media and the internet are a brilliant platform to convert passions into popularity, satisfaction, social impact, money, or whatever else one wants.
College students doing something about their interests, or doing volunteer work -- not for certificates but because they love to do it -- are always heartening to see.
With proper intervention at school and college level, more people can be motivated to create value out of hobbies, and feel accepted for doing the same. Taking initiative needs to become cool. Academics and hobbies must mix seamlessly, and a career should be seen as doing what you love, not as a sequel to academics, not as work that must be joyless.
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