It was the article in the local paper that caught attention. Teenager is no more. One more, damn hell, what is going on, was the first thought as I delved into the article.
As went through it turned out that a teenager had decided to end his life the reason given, he was bored with life and hence decided to end it. More over, he did not want his remains to be taken back home to his country. What a shocker of a start to a day.
With the limited information that could manage to get through the news, it did appear that a student who was appearing for his exams decided to end his life and wrote his final note on the School Exam Paper addressed to his parents. Why this was done, no one knows and probably being a private matter, should rest at that.
As I read the related Articles on the subject, could not but help wonder, is this the result of a society or the community going wrong some where? You have here a child who has access to probably every thing a child probably needs, access to a life and requirements, more probably than what his parents or their parents had, a life of ease and luxury, that was worked for by one's parents, but yet not enough.
The question can be multi fold. There have been numerous articles where students take their life every year, many due to pressures of studying, many due to peer pressure, many due to pressures of not being able to get a good college, or their girl friend leaving them, or the girl that they think they are in love with not accepting their love and getting married...... and.. and.. and... and... the list can be endless..
Question is, is life so cheap? Is life really meaningless that one can decide to end it simply due to a whim, or simply because it did not measure up to expectations? Is life so expected to be full of zest, that a little slackness ends up being a killer? Is life a comparative model that is measured on graphs in comparison with others? Has life really become a bore?
There are no doubt today a lot more pressures, a lot more challenges that what were there 100 years ago. Times no doubt have changed, cut throat competition more sharper than a razors edge, and the impact is there for all to see. Schools / Colleges are no longer guaranteed, parents are finding ways to survive better than their peers, parents make their children go through heaven and hell to ensure that they finish on the top of the lot to get the best in life, to be an all rounder, to be No. 1 in every thing in life, no matter the cost.
To this extent, one even sees Parents going the extra mile to ensure that their kids get the best. Be it education, clothes, lifestyle, cars, accessories, what ever, it has to be the best. One cannot be seen to be a shade lower than their peers, as per many a parent, it could scar their children psychologically!!
But at what cost? We see more and more children getting disillusioned with life, more children unable to meet the expectations set from them, more getting dragged into a lifestyle of comparisons and show biz, that ultimately leads to destruction. For sure there will be those who succeed, but then for every success, there are surely 100 failures which are never heard of. The ones we hear are where people have lost their lives, or given up and lost and at that moment, we all shed a tear of sorrow with a comment, Poor kid.
Question that comes is, what is needed to make life simple yet interesting. What is needed to make life less competitive? What is needed to make life, a means to live and not a means to run to reach to the end, only to find out that there is no one there, or we were actually pushed to reach there, at the needs of some one else. What is required to have children and most important parents understand, that life is for living? There is a reason why a child is born, the result of two people deciding to create / bring new life into the world.
Question that comes is, are parents, society bringing in new life to put them into challenges and into the rat race? Why not simply decide to leave life as is? Why make it so complicated that living itself becomes a burden. One does wonder.. We talk about leaving a better world to our children. But in a planet that is no better than before, a world filled to the brim with environmental disasters, are we also leaving them a life full of stress! What are they going to leave their children? Probably too far out to think!
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