The Missing pieces of my map
Started as a three day three piece article on LinkedIn. Each focused on what I feel essential for children to learn during schooling in an attempt to encourage kids from my local community to dream freely. And this is my final piece.
My decision to go study from a nationally reputed University in Pune right after my 12th seemed far-fetched to almost everyone around me. My parents were quite the opposite, especially my dad, despite the financial situation and me who just passed exam and never been in hostels. He didn’t earn any formal degree but he is a skilled analyst whom I’ll be always fascinated of. The then me could not completely comprehend this humongous risk that my parents were willing to take for me.
I was well aware of the type of risk but not its scale.
Eventually I did. That’s when I started seeing all aspects of my life. I realized
The Missing pieces of my map. Or say my puzzle.
This is my contribution to the kids in my local community. I’m using this platform to encourage them to see the world wide open and dream freely by sharing my genuine failures and perspectives.
Here, I’ll be talking about the pieces I missed during schooling.
1/3 : Reading
First, this is something I’m perplexed about everytime I look back.
I ask frequently myself this,”How the heck you could’ve missed that?”
Until certain grades, there were dedicated library hours which we only spent by doing nothing, atleast as far as I remember. It had been just another hour to pass during our school hours. I was never an avid reader then yet I collected so much books that I had a little library at home which I should’ve made use of.
College started. Made friends. And started observing the environment I was in and its people. I saw there are multiple types of intelligence around me like emotional, musical and more. One of them, I was curious about was
the Perspective Intelligence
I asked them how do you think differently. I learnt from them that books are the best medium to gain it. It’s like living many lives in your one-shot life. I slowly picked up reading. Still not consistent at it, but making some progress.
Books make one mentally stable and strong. I only got aware of the concept of Mental Health during my college days. Indians are notorious to ignore it’s importance in one’s well being. If it weren’t for my little investment in reading, I’d have been making some serious mistakes over and over.
“A Book is a gift you can open again and again” — Garrison Keiller
I think it’s the only type of addiction that does good to its user.
2/3 : Money
Oh my! This is something we never learn from any school. Infact not even from our parents. The world calls it the root cause of all miseries. But I say it’s the most misused evolutionary tool. Ultimately, everything revolves around it. And that’s the one common reward keeping us motivated to rush to produce/ create work, atleast so far, unless ofcourse we found new means to work without it.
We’ve built up a society with money as it’s foundation. So like it or not we’re bound to live by it. Popular saying like Take from rich and give it to poor is utter stupidity.
Our views on money are diluted and deviated. We’re just oblivious. Because we spend much of early years only trying to get professionally/ academically ready to serve some masters we hate to work under. And right after your formal education, you’re expected to survive in an environment that you cannot comprehend.
Let me put forward how my first missing piece, Reading, helped me here. I read this book called, “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. It had gotten me captivated so much that I finished it in 2 days. I only had the capacity to finish a book only by a month or more. I simply couldn’t allow myself to have gained this knowledge/ perspective. So I made my parents to read its Tamil version. Believe it or not, my parents are not book-lovers at all. It’s been decades since they had a book on their hands. I just made them start. Now they discuss with me about their mistakes they were oblivious of. It was one of my happiest moments of my life.
With no knowledge of money, we work for it as slaves. If schools could teach what money is, I believe we can create better lives for ourselves and people around us.
You may find it odd because I realized we can solve every problem in this world if we gained Financial IQ.
That Money is not real. And your reward is not money.
Your rewards are defined by the problems you solve, things you create, the people you serve with the spirit and energy you have.
Once you gain confidence in your skills and experience, you can make money at any point in life. And that takes time. So, start early on.
3/3 : Learning Arts and Having Guru
This is the piece of my life I failed miserably and made no progress even with the current level of understanding. Frankly, my life at school was monotonous. Failing to learn any Art during schooling was not because I wasn’t exposed to them but not showing why it was needed.
If my father, mother, or anyone, or even if I had gotten any chance to witness the joy in the artist’s eyes while they were performing would’ve been the right purpose for me to start. During my college days, when I saw my friends and juniors being multi-talented, there were many days I felt insignificant and regretful.
Every human is an artist.
If he/she fails to learn any, it’s impossible to one’s purpose.
A human with purpose is more powerful than we imagine. But a human without purpose is a threat to himself and his/ her society.
The current construct of school system is not organically letting students to engage in any forms of Art in most of the cases. Arts is something seen as optional and recreational. I once talked to my parents on how losing our true cultural identity made me indecisive in the long run. Traditionally, we used to pick an Art, mostly what parents did, and learn it’s skills and finally master it. The point here is not the Art but the process. The person you become through the process is what matters. That is what defines a person.
Following a Guru, finding a mentor are overlooked. I’m not suggesting to practice devotion but gaining mental discipline. Since I hadn’t learn any Art during my childhood, now it’s quite unpleasant for me to have undivided attention on anything. Practicing an Art leads to mastery of self. I’m still a child when it comes to focus. Easily distracted but widely interested in everything. Having a diverse interests are good but it’ll not pay off if I don’t know what I want in my life. That’s where Gurus and Mentors help us.
For it may seem hard to have a child gain discipline but what’s more worse is an adult with no discipline. I’m one of those adults. Yet I’m figuring a way to overcome this flaw of mine.
The current school education is a base, and you’re only molded by the art you choose and the guru you follow.
Remember this, my friend. The real fun starts when you apply, or perform, what you learnt.
My final piece/ idea
Learning is a lifelong process, and schools can teach us how to learn rather than how to study. Imagine our teachers performing their talents and skills to their students and the institutions setting up such interactive environment. Well, this sounds fancy to speak. Changes are all around us and some institutions are picking up.
I was fortunate to work with schools in improving students learning efficiency. I’m really confident in saying that it is just a matter of being creative in approaching teaching.
Here’s what I’m suggesting
My intention of this whole piece is
- To prevent school students from falling into common traps in real life. Talk to them about failures than success stories we always speak of
- To make them do things that they think they’re only capable of doing after college. Essentially, making them to work on their own ideas and take calculated risks
- To encourage local talent to generate local employment and point out that migrating to urban cities is not necessary
I’m writing this three years later my graduation. And I’m extremely clear that
You don’t need a college degree to validate yourself to start working on your ideas. It is not a milestone that post which you’ll be able to build a company.
Entrepreneurship was introduced to me during college years. I was fascinated by my college and couple of other institutions which have this facility called Incubation Cell provided to handpicked students-teams for them to grow from ideation to prototype, in some cases even support provided for scaling up.
For any Entrepreneur who wants to develop the idea, what they require initially are Space to work and Mentorship. Which is what this cell provided.
Now, what if there were such Incubation Cells in Schools?
Imagine a school supporting its Alumni who take the existing students in their teams to build their niche problem-solving ideas. I wouldn’t know about others but this idea sounds fabulous to me. For schools, this will be an incredible move benefiting its entire eco-system.
This not only encourages the students to learn in a real world scenario but also encourages the local talent and young minds to create opportunities in their own locality to become a vital part of their growing-city. Which gives them the sense of purpose, identity and community.
Thinking more about this in real terms, it is academically difficult to position it for students during their school hours. There will be more parameters to work on before setting this up which I don’t know yet. And I agree this idea sounds only conceptual but I believe in it.
Final Note: Despite all of those I mentioned as missing, I admit I too had my most beautiful days at school in many ways. Made lifelong friends. Met amazing teachers. My First Crush. Tours. Events. Classes. Punishments. Little Victories. And just being a kid.
If you’re a student and found this helpful, I’ll be happy to hear from you.
And others, what you missed during your schooling?
Thank you for hearing me out.
BTW, how are you?
