Spending youth….wisely

June 16, 2013 Off By Vinayak Gole

Time is just like money. You can never save the whole of it. You can invest time, just like money and you can always save some of your time. Invest time wisely and you can reap in rich benefits. On the contrary, spend it freely and you will be left with nothing but memories to spend your life with. Aaahh!! Memories!! Isn’t that the theme of most of the movies these days? Spend your time, while it away, chase your dreams because you can never have those memories back. Time is a-wasting. But the question is..Are the memories really worth the time being wasted?

I recently watched a hit Hindi movie called “Yeh Jawani hai Deewani”, roughly translated to “This crazy youth”. The protagonist is an idler, a wasteful influence on his bunch of friends but just out of the blue, flies off to the US, completes a course in journalism and before you know it, is a star cameraman for a hit show. Which makes me wonder, what is it about chasing dreams that everyone seems to like? Is it the defiance of accepting a life handed out to us by destiny? Everyone seems to have loved the movie. Another hit is in the making and another bunch of foolish people have been exploited selling dreams

Youth should be spent wisely. When you land up on the throes of infinite innuendo and force, it is viable to make the utmost use of it, not just while it away…all for some memories. But everywhere you look, dreams are all that are being sold. I met a couple of my juniors in a newly opened mall last weekend. One had a very expensive watch; the other had his hands full with bags. Over a casual cup of coffee, I asked them why they were spending more than what they even earned. And I was surprised to hear the exact same lines that the movies have been promoting. My juniors, they enlightened me to the fact that, it was only one life. It had to be spent to the fullest. Tomorrow was just another day. When the time came, they would be ready for the credit card payments. I was left wondering….How?

This is how the general trend of the youth these days. We, the lesser of the breed, believe in saving. Saving for a better future, for an unsafe future. However, we are deemed archaic and old fashioned.

Youth needs a sense of direction and more specifically, it needs a sense of understanding to know how exactly it has to be spent. With money easily available and popularity propagating extravagance, it is but natural for the youth to drift away. The development of the world depends on these very youngsters who seem to be drifting away. The farther they drift, the farer they take the world with them.

We welcome your comments at letters@friedeye.com