Alexander the Great conquered the entire West Asia and defeated the Persian Empire before he, in a modern parallel, reached the final year of BCom. Albert Einstein got married, had a kid, and discovered the theory of relativity before the age of 26. Even most of our parents, by age 25, had started a family and applied for a home loan. Yet people today are clueless even at the age of 35, still “figuring out” and “evaluating options”.
Are we spending too many years preparing for “responsibility”? Do we really need 10+2+4+2 years of education to occasionally unmute ourselves in meetings and say, “I have nothing to add”? To make pivot tables and speak flowery English? Much of those 18 years cancel each other out. Except for 0.001% of people, nobody is gaining from spending nights mastering aldol condensation. A Cannizzaro reaction is not helping you answer, in the quarterly sales meeting, why your territory didn’t grow by 12% year-on-year. And it’s not just education; this long, circuitous path to reaching your destination is a feature of all facets of life, such as starting a family.
The immediate rejoinder from those who have been through this excruciatingly long assembly line is that every bit counts. It is not just the courses but also the people, the peer group, and whatnot. An aldol condensation won’t help you in your consulting career, but mastering it establishes discipline and rigour. Great argument. But once you have defended your education loans in front of people, you can ask yourself this in private. And you’ll feel hollow.
Every once in a while, you will feel your job could be done by a standard XII student, if she is trained well for six months. This feeling especially dawns on people who went for an MBA.
Life was simpler a century ago — knowledge of sowing, harvesting, and crafting tools, among other things, was the only professional education one needed, and that education was complete by the age of 18. With an able body and years of training, one was ready to earn and then start a family. But then some smart guy thought, this kid needs to be taught about aldol condensation as well, and that’s where we unwittingly invented unemployment.
The guy who could have been a great farmhand, expert at sowing seeds, or could have woven export quality carpets — after learning complex chemistry — suddenly was too educated for the farm, and so he amicably settled for being jobless. It worked out great for a bright minority who went abroad and invented great things, but it kept the majority pining for a white-collar job, giving up their ancestral skill. And hence delaying every life milestone.
To justify our own procrastination, another argument thrown in is the low life expectancy of those times. The average lifespan of an Indian at the time of Independence was 32 years. In the 1800s, it was 25 years. Given you didn’t have enough years to go for an executive MBA, you moved fast with world domination and producing babies. No wonder Alexander was the most famous 32-year-old. The averages are skewed due to the high infant mortality rate in those days, but there is no denying that thanks to modern medicine, we now have longer lives. So, do we have more time to brood over stuff?
Which end of our life are we extending now? Atul Gawande, an American surgeon, in his fascinating book, Being Mortal, says modern medicine has, of course, prolonged our life, but much of that life is spent in a wheelchair or a hospital bed. In some cases, extending suffering. “The day you lose control of your stool and are dependent on someone else, the will to live starts dissipating,” a dying old man told me once. I can imagine it to be true.
Given our productive time is limited, why is the youth so reluctant to make life decisions now? One key shift is that the entire world is your neighbourhood now. The concept of a local maxima is gone. Earlier, you did well in your immediate vicinity, your peer group, and were appreciated for it. You were secure enough to take responsibilities. Now, the entire world is your peer group, and you are never satisfied. Someone living in a poor neighbourhood gets an entry-level job. He is the happiest then and can take up other responsibilities. But now he compares himself with a similar guy 2,000 miles away and is perennially unhappy and insecure. It’s not just restricted to jobs but to your partner, family, and status.
The short point is our prime years are limited. We need to make this time count. The experts need to re-look from 30,000 ft above if the assembly line is the best possible path to reach life milestones. Is this outdated? Can we reach there quicker? We should think.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur, and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal
