"Change is the only constant."
-Anonymous
A smart guy had said once, “In today’s world, what are national boundaries but mere lines on maps.” And I couldn't have agreed any more with him. We are living in, as it has been said, a global village after all. No offence to Jackie Chan but now we don’t really need 80 days to travel around the world, and it is but inevitable that with the advent of globalization there has been an ever increasing exchange of ideologies, both cultural and technological. It is an obvious fact but I would still venture to say that all this has drastically changed the way we, the people, live their lives. It is mostly for the good I think but as we all know, every coin has two sides to it. More often than not, it goes down to an individual level that how this phenomenon affects us.
Now that the stage is set, let me bring to fore the real topic at hand. India, the birthplace of the oldest and greatest of civilizations, has been seeing a big cultural shift as of late. We as a nation are at a crucial juncture at the moment. India has one of the largest, if not the largest, youth population in the world and that can be said to be the biggest reason for the change we are going through. This large chunk of the population grew in the age of web, lightning fast media, cross-cultural references and exquisite gadgets. Sounds good, doesn't it? But these are the same people who before even getting their driving licenses end up getting depression (or worst case, pregnant) at times! We are being influenced by the west they say, but is that the real reason? As I had already mentioned it is but inevitable that societies will adopt changes using the influx of new ideas from far and beyond. But beating the shit out of some girls in a bar and harassing them in broad daylight is not the best way to go about dealing with this change surely enough!
We, as the present generation have a lot on our plate. Identity crises were never this prominent ever before and peer pressure weighs down heavy on even your average school kid. The fact that most of the parents won’t listen to anything but their deep-rooted age old beliefs doesn't help at all. Trying to find a way out many of us want to act differently, make others take notice. In this process many of the teens end up being enamored by the ways of the west. They listen to rock music just because the cool people do, they try to “get into a relationship” because they don’t want to end up like the forever alone guy on their FB timeline and in the process they lose the grip on what they really are. Now, I am not saying anything mentioned above is bad per SE but the reasons most of the people tend to do them are!
You don't need to smoke just because the you saw some apparent "hot-shot" do it. You don't have to dress up like everyone else expects you to do. You don't need to act as a rebel just because you think it would make you stand out. The only things you need to do is to ask yourself, "What do I really want to do?" and then you need to follow your heart. Trust me, in the long run it will give you a satisfaction that nothing else will do.
My final piece of advice :
Simply follow the mantra, " Do what you love, Love what you do..."
