You're The Bows from Which Your Children as Living Arrows Are Sent Forth

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 25 June 2024 "My father was a renowned medico. But I opted for literature. He never insisted that I should also follow suit. This is what I want the Indian parents to understand. Never impose your will and wish on your offspring. Let them do what they want to. You've lived your life. Now let your children live theirs. Read Kahlil Gibran's immortal poem " On Children " as an everyday ritual for ideal parenting." Actor Saeed Jaffrey in his autobiography, Saeed: An Actor's Journey (1998) -------- This pertains to Nava Thakuria's NEET-UG 2024. In fact, this has been going on for many years. Apart from large scale corruption, governmental apathy, involvement of coaching centres, abysmal standards of education and monomaniac desire to become only doctors and engineers, overwhelming parental pressure is also responsible for this fiasco. Indian parents use their kids as the flag bearers of their (parents) unfulfilled ambitions and aspirations. They can go to any length for the fulfilment of their unfulfilled aspirations and broken dreams. So, they keep pressuring their kids to join coaching classes and study hard to become doctors/engineers without ever bothering about the natural inclinations of their children. These over-ambitious parents never realize that their kids may have seeds of becoming a writer, musician, actor or a singer. Alas, children become carriers of their parents' dreams and join coaching classes to become doctors and engineers, much to their reluctance. After the NEET-NET paper leak incidents, many students, on condition of anonymity, are telling the reporters of newspapers that their parents contacted the agents and gave them money to leak the papers so that they (students) could crack the exams and become doctors. Now students are suffering because of their parents' unethical dreams, desires and demands. They're being sacrificed on the altar of parental dreams which is absolutely unfair, nay, criminal. Is becoming a doctor or engineering the sole purpose of one's life? Aren't there options beyond that? People in India seem to have conditioned themselves to become only doctors, engineers and IAS officers! They splurge money and resort to all unfair means to become doctors. Imagine what will these people do after becoming doctors? They didn't choose the profession out of passion. They became doctors because their parents wanted to make them doctors. Saeed Jaffrey rightly advised these parents to read Gibran's poem 'On Children' as an everyday ritual: "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams." We need to change our collective mind-set. All such cases of corruption in the field of education will come down drastically, if not vanish overnight. ------- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/children-living-arrows-career-neet-ug-net-leak/d/132569 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism