A step ahead
Arresting the downward tumble Neerja Singh
A
ll the smart marketing jargon, shrewd political negotiations and original, earth-shaking ideas will come a cropper if we leave behind a world not fit enough for our young. The other worrying fact is that they themselves exhibit a troubling lack of resilience to make a go of their legacy from us. Do you remember how it was? There was a virtual cocoon of distance and silence around my generation as we advanced through our teen years into adulthood. There was space to breathe and hear ourselves think. There was only a trickle of information about our peers that reached us. We met them in school or college or at work and the rest of the time was spent at home, doing our own thing. The adult world inspired confidence and assurance. The children today sit under a waterfall of information about everyone else their age across mother earth’s curvature. There is no escaping how well or poorly they compare with their contemporaries. And it is not just them, their families know the degree of differences too because everybody is on the same social media platform. There is no getting away. Imagine going through life with gritted teeth, pictures of your classmate’s rising popularity curve, foreign exchange program and that unholy trip to the beaches with her ‘oh so cool’ family competing with their Instagram retouched book festival story. Everyone else appears to be sorted on all fronts; all of it figured out, life’s boxes in place. And there you are, at age 15, living in mortal fear of your house-of-cards falling. You know there has been another shooting in the United States. Your social media feed tells you about the glaciers sliding towards the plains. There are videos of plastic activists screaming at you that your body is spontaneously absorbing 5 gms of plastic every week. Your best friend just cancelled on you. Your friends are telling you to pipe down and not be so hypercompetitive. Your parents direct mixed messages at you about giving your exam a 1000 per cent but then feeling frustrated if you 42 TEACHER PLUS, AUGUST 2020
