Bigger cars, better roads, better house, and the comforts never ever seen before. These are one of the foremost thoughts that cloud the minds of most of the young school pass-outs of small cities when they make the decision to go to a metropolitan city for taking up higher education.
Yes, there are students who have been conditioned to believe that their lives are not complicated till the time they continue to achieve the targets set for them by their surroundings and most of the times these students surround themselves with people of similar ideals. They study their hearts out and often make it to the campus they thought they were destined to.
Most of us, though, are not those souls. We are feathers flying in wind currents and it is the currents that determine where we will ultimately land up. For those of us who land up in a new bigger city, the things that await us are such we never thought of. Life changes dramatically and their thoughts and ideologies are challenged every minute by people who by appearance look like us, but whose ideas, thoughts and priorities are different. Then and there, starts a war within us. A war that eventually defines who we really are.
The five emotions that this new environment forces upon the student the most are love, lust, happiness, satisfaction and desire. These five radical emotions are put to test every minute in the new surrounding dominated by new people and this ferocious bombardment of ideas question the individual's conditioning every minute and he is left with nothing but smoke dust that cloud his judgments and leave him confused.
He realizes that to be a part of this new environment he has to embrace it, though he does not fully understand the changes and its impacts. His conditioning reacts to every change he faces and the war grows thicker. He knows his priorities, those which lie in getting better grades and eventually landing up a better pay package and a life of comfort. But as this new environment offers him new, never felt before impulses, the freedom of thoughts, the freedom of action, and the freedom of choosing illusions he likes. The bird eventually breaks the cage to explore new and never seen before horizons, thinking that he knows what this path has to offer. "I have a book report due tomorrow but the gang is heading towards a pub". The conditioning confronts freedom and eventually looses. Sacrificing a class test for a fun night is one of the first battles between the old conditioning and this new impulse of freedom and more often than not the free bird flies.
Time flies by and the old conditioned concepts of love, lust, desire, happiness and satisfaction are replaced by new concepts of love, lust, desire, happiness and satisfaction. The feelings though remain the same, but the scales and parameters change.
Now the student does not want the job that just pays him well, now he wants to work at a place he feels he belongs to, and he will not settle for anything less. The old small-town girlfriend is replaced by a new, more exciting and attractive soul. Life seems perfect, time goes on....
Until.. there again comes a roadblock.
His new surroundings had been serving him well till now because he has molded himself to accept the surroundings, but the law of nature is that nothing stays constant. Change is inevitable and it happens again. His new conditioning is again bombarded with a new set of ideas and again.. the poor soul is left confused.
Changes might be numerous. A jolt in love life, which makes him deny the existence of love, flunking in exams, which concludes in reasoning that a college degree and a job do not actually mean anything and a free man ought to live a free life. Lack of satisfaction which concludes to lack of happiness which alarms for changes again. The circle goes on. By the time this student leaves college he feels he has nothing with him and no one by his side. His surrounding society expects a lot from him and he feels he is alone in this cruel world with nobody to share his dilemmas with.
If you feel related to this student, this article is written for you. Do not give in to negativism. Do not become enemy of yourself. Life is nothing but a circle of complex illusions. Don’t feel alone living in a world where your thoughts are tied to yourself. Instead, fly.. find people who understand you, and yes there are people like you. Become a master of your fate. Create your own illusion that you love, and the universe will conspire to make you happy. Do what you do best. Break the cages and fly.
Nishant Awasthi
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