I was talking to my friend the other day. He was asking me what is the "Future Generation" that I was talking about in my other blog. He told me I was too vague and he was curious about how I would plan to reach the future generation of the world, as they have too many books to read why would even care to come to website that is one among millions out there.
My answer to that is, "No". I am not referring to all the young men and women in the world. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. My goal is to build and mobilize the close community that I have built around myself, the aspirant and motivated young people that I have met and will be meeting.
In this context, let me clarify why and what I want to do.
I come from a small town in India. I am fortunate to have caring parents who have lived everyday of their life to provide me the opportunity to achieve higher goals leading towards having a better life than them. I would like to believe I have not let them down. Yet I have constant feeling that I have underachieved at the crucial stages of my career. I feel I have not fulfilled my potential. My idol, Jayaprakash Narayan, has put it brilliantly,
"There are two great sins, one is unfulfilled potential and the other is avoidable suffering. These two are in abundance in India and this makes me angry"
I feel sad when I meet people who can't recognize their potential and who don't know how to fulfill their potential. As a child I always wanted to achieve something yet I have confusion about the choices available. I have spent weeks and months lazily not knowing what I wanted in life. Now I know but sadly I needed that information at that time.
I have lived with that vagueness about things at large. As a boy, I felt a void in my community about the things that I wanted to learn and need in the way I could relate. As a man, I have always felt a compulsive need to engage in a conversation with the youth in my community. I wanted to know their fears and anxieties and see if I can help them in any way. Basically, I want to have a dialogue with everyone in the community.
Practically it is not possible as I can't do this alone. I need to involve other grown-ups in the community. The idea of website came when I felt web medium is ideally suited for this purpose.
Having answered the why, let me give you idea of what I want to do.
I want to present achievements, failures faced by people in our community (myself, my friends and whoever is willing) and the things we have learned from our failures. If somebody is at the cross roads of their life, it could help them. If somebody doesn't realize their potential, our thoughts and ideas may tap into their community esteem, "If my neighbor can do that so can I". It is easy for them to relate as we are one among them. The bar for achievement in our community as a whole would thus be raised.
The idea of this conversation is not to tell kids what they should do rather instill the ability to rationalize before doing things they need to do. It is not for them to have our perspective of life rather to form their own and challenge ours when they conflict. This process will lead to a better perspective for all.
I know you could be still cynical. Believe me when I say this, most of the inspiring and motivating things are heard from a friend or a relative. Let me recount my own example. There is this brilliant professor, Randy Pausch who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer was asked to give a last lecture. He talked brilliantly about achieving dreams. It has inspired me after hearing it. It has more than seven million hits in the youtube yet I was not aware of it until yesterday when my friend, Srinivas, told me.
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
My belief is that young kids in our community need to hear such stories.
My road is empty now and I am looking on. Hope you all will join me.
Rama Gundapaneni
Edited by: Dr. Srinivas Ramakrishnan