Societal Programming

The day a child is born, he is born with certain rights out of which the first used right is the right to express. The right to cry in public for milk, right to ask for food anywhere, right to throw tantrums for a toy or otherwise, make faces, make a fuss, laugh aloud or just a random smile at a stranger, without any fear of judgement. He can do this because he is fearless and unaware of the so called “Right Ways.” As soon as he grows, we make him learn the importance of time and place and how our behavior should change accordingly.

We show him the appropriate place and time for anything and everything, slowly steadily turning a beautiful free human being into a programmed robot. Expression is made subject to environment and time. Fine tuning of an individual is necessary, this is the reason system of schooling exists but there is a very minute difference between education and programming. Mentoring is needed to enhance the freedom in every way and to explain the responsibilities associated with it.

Instead, we as society imbibe fear in a child making him overthink at every step. We never normalize failures. We glorify victory out of proportion. As a result, we make ‘caution’ a mandate. On the contrary the mandate should be exploration. As that child grows, he is exposed increasingly to schedules, discipline, and mannerisms. He is shown further goals and asked to make ways for achieving them, adding to more agony. So often, we do hear ‘life is not a bed of roses’, but do we ever think WHY? Because we never let it be one. Programming makes a person fearful in varying degrees and then people around start complaining about one being not that expressive. This is a vicious circle created by humans for humans.

Nevertheless, why complain as the chaos is created by us only. We are the programmers of that free baby. Converters of a free baby into a human machine of no free will. It would have been so much better if we could let the individual flow. Set the individual free flow who is inside us, the individual for whose life we are responsible, i.e our children and the allies in our story, just all of them. Fluidity of thoughts and fluidity of expression can really make life easy for us and people around us.

By: Rashmi N Bhalla