Quality of Life

Last week i was talking to a friend and we chanced upon analyzing the lifestyle of the successful citizens of western economies. Most of our generation aspires towards the ideal of a lifestyle that we see in western movies and tv, and we emulate their dress, their accent, their way of life as we percieve or imagine it to be. This is a fact that most of our young people would like to move abroad and live that life . But another fact is that if they want a lifestyle like that, once abroad, they have to live a fairly regimented life, where most of the day is spent working and the rest doing chores, and only on weekends do they get a respite. This is the routine of a successful executive living in say, NYC. But here the boys and girls live off the money of their parents, and pretend the outward trappings of a rich and decadent lifestyle which is actually composed of using internet devices, hanging out with friends, going out and ...well not much apart from that. this alarming tendency emerging among our youth was memorably captured in the Pakistani movie" Slackistan". Most of us and our younger generation want to get rich as early in life as possible, taking easy ways, emphasizing that quality of life matters more than the achievements and successes that their parents might want them to aspire to. Yet this is a contorted view of the western ideal. Those who have lived abroad know that most of the people there work twice as much as we do. But here, the young people want the lifestyle, but dont want the work . It is also a fact that the majority of the people in the west are working as entrepreneurs at different levels. Here in Pakistan we lack the opportunities but also the drive to work for ourselves, to work with our hands,take initiative, take risks and strike out on our own. ever when trained and educated in business, most of our youth would like to do a job, in the private or public sector, making perhaps half of what they could earn if they worked as entrepreneurs. Naturally, if everyone wants to work for somebody else, we will not have growth and people becoming millionnaires. Well well well. The cobwebs of the mind are mostly social and tangled in the feudal mindset. It is not the done thing to work with your own hands. It is more socially acceptable to have a job, and among the lower classes, a government job, even if it is that of a peon, because it reflects a certain amount of stability. Perhaps we do not have opportunities, perhaps the government is to blame for not having policies which crate an enabling environment. But modern USA was not made by the government, it was made by the pioneering businessmen and spculators who established businesses which resulted in huge growth of the economy. All the government needs to do is not to interfere too much , but a social change and change in the way we think about growth and achievement is required in Pakistan. We need to encourage our young ones to stand up and achieve on their own steam, rather than be forty years old and still expecting dole outs from their parents and lackmailing aging parents if they do not oblige. This vicious circle of exploitation masquerading in the form of obeisance within families needs to end. Each young bird in the nest needs to learn to fly on its own. The problem with parents is that we see our children not as individuals but extentions of ourselves and feel slighted if they are not successful, spending our whole lifetime sustaining them whereas it should be the other way round if at all. We need to open our eyes to these realities. i wish the quality of life by the youth is not weighed by not only how much money you have or u spend, but also on how much you work to achieve this on your own. An independent life, not obliged to anybody, should be the best life. The true determinant of the quality of life is making it all happen on your own steam, not as a parasite. Acting as an individual, we stand to gain much more, indivudually and collectively.