Day 12/100
I was browsing the podcast app Spotify to choose what shows I want to follow. I was amazed by the sheer amount of choices that were on display. Which area was excluded? Not any, I suppose. It had everything for every mood and every person’s taste…mind-blowing!
This made me think that this generation has too many choices to opt from. They are lucky, yet, they don’t understand the value of what they have. For instance, in earlier times, every thing we would buy and use was bought after a lot of deliberation. We would physically go to the shops, browse through the options and then make the decision depending on our budget. I don’t remember ever going back to return anything we bought. That concept didn’t exist, perhaps! And each person lived within their budget. For instance, when a friend in school carried an expensive pencil box or an imported pen, we would neither come home and ask our parents for it, nor our parents ever felt guilty of not providing for their children what others had. Each one seemed satisfied with what they had and what they were capable of getting.
Somewhere over the years, this lack of choices has lost. Today, parents (and that includes me too) buy in abundance and don’t mind if half of that is lying waste in a corner of the house. Children have so many options that they don’t value anything at all. So, today when people of my generation ( I belong to the late 70’s, by the way) are given options in abundance, they are lost. They don’t know where to start, what to take and which one to leave. Even when it comes for free, we are careful to choose.
I’m not complaining. Every generation has witnessed some kind of change. Our parents scoffed at our spending though when we compare it to the present times, it was pittance. Similarly, we simply cannot accept the way our children waste things and opportunities that come to them easily. But situations change and so do economy and buying/spending power and we simply keep moving from one time to another, silently witnessing the times that unravel before us. I am all for technology and the comforts that it brings to our lives. However, if it made people more responsible, things would be different.
Today, I don’t have a question to you. But I only want you to look around and observe how everyday we seem to be leading the same life, yet one day when we look back, a lot seems to have changed. Isn’t it? When did that happen?
