Life's a Race, Life's a Competition!!

A New Year and a new Decade is what we are in now and I wish all of my friends a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. It had been a great last year but not discussing it here as I guess enough of that has been discussed by me in the last post. :)

I happened to see one of the most-talked movies these days, '3 Idiots' last Sunday and well, it surely has an innovative idea which is getting the cash registers ringing for the movie. While it has many lessons for us, but a couple of these really made me go deep into my world of thoughts. In one of the scenes, Rancho (Aamir) says, "Yeh Zindagi Ek Race Hai." I further continue this statement with my questions : Is life just a competition? Are we living to survive or we are surviving to live?

Since our childhood, we are asked to top in our class. We are compared with the others and our parents say, see, that chap has got so good marks, why cant you get the same? Your classmate stood first in the university, why cant you? That boy earns a lac per mensum, have jobs dried up for you?? Seeds of this self-initiated competition are often sown in us since our childhood and we remain a part of this competition whole of our life, no matter where we have reached or what we have achieved. Such competition often sows seeds of jealousy and hatredness among each other. No matter what our own ability or talent is, what matters the most is how was the performance of the our so-called competitors and if that was not better than us, we have performed great. The rising expectations and growing competition (more often than not, an unhealthy one these days) has often been quite a big factor in the rising number of suicides by the students as they are not able to handle the pressure and live upto the expectations of their parents, relatives or society. No wonder, we get many news of suicides after Board exams results are announced. Even the character 'Joy' in the movie was a perfect example of such lapse who succumbed under the unacceptance of his talent even though he was on his way of making an incredible invention.

It is said success is a relative term. It really becomes relative when there is a comparison with others. I see so many students who have secured even 90+ marks in their respective examinations but they are not happy, they are not delighted for such a score. The reason, they got a mark less than their competitor in these exams. On the other hand, students with maybe 60+ are enjoying their result more than these 90+ students. I have witnessed several such cases and I believe that you all will agree with me too. One experience of this kind also happened with me around 2 years back. We were undergoing our computer training and we had a test one day. I got lesser marks,probably just suffiecient enough, the prime reason coz I was a bit unwell in those few days and another of my friends, who had 10 marks more than me was on cloud nine that day and was heard saying that my mother would be more than happy today as I have left Simar behind. I was quite surprised to hear this as even his marks could not be said good enough to substantiate his joy but leaving me behind was a success for him.

Why go any far, the real example lies with each of us too. We become a part of many social networking sites like Orkut, facebook and believe that we can write and whatever we wish to but the fact remains that we want more people to read what we are doing, we want more comments on our photos and our status. One day, we also start writing a blog which is said to be a mirror of our feelings and we say we will be freely expressing ourselves but one thing back in our mind says, will this post be liked by my readers, will I get interesting comments. So, knowingly or unknowingly, we be an athlete taking part in this competition.

All of us are engulfed in this useless rat race. But my question still remains unanswered - is this competition the real purpose of life? I don't intend to express that there shouldn't be any competition in our life but it should be a healthy one and in fact its more better when life is a continuing competition with ourselves only and not with others. The movie sparked off an idea for this post, so just ending it with one of its dialogue, "Kaabil Bano Kaabil, kamyaabi jhakk maarke tumhare peeche aayegi." (Strive for knoweldge & excellence and the success is bound to follow you).

And reiterating what I said above, one thing back in our mind says, 'whether this post will be liked by my readers?', so do post your comments. ;)