Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” The profundity of this thought reflects upon the significance of knowledge and self-expression. For centuries, education has been an uplifting attribute of self-awareness. Education leverages one’s personality, character, and moral consciousness. As a spearhead to extricate the self from dogmas and nuances of fear, education has been the handbook of insight that edifies positive behavior, indoctrinates intellectual expression, and stimulates self-exploration. But what happens when education is no more than a paper qualification? Or when an educated mind is stormed by pseudo effect that supersedes logic by bigotry and narrow-mindedness? Most people identify education with know-how and erudition, a mechanism that benefits them with employability and professional development. However, education is rarely taken as a supplement to enlightenment, open-mindedness, and refinement of the self. Had education been the core of mastery in life, man would have been much wiser and content than he is today. Negative thoughts, sulking behavior, greed, jealousy, anger and betrayal would thus have been replaced by joy, good nature, and peace of mind.
Moreover, violence, carnage, and abuse would have been infinitesimal currents in the life’s oceanic expanse had education been the force behind life’s flow. But the truth is that it is not. Perhaps it is one reason why many educated professionals live a duplicitous life where they perpetually craft ill means to put down others. For instance, many cases of dowry harassment and assault in India involve in-laws who are educated professionals, but have still made their daughter-in law’s life a living hell. Being educated and belonging to respectful families, these in-laws forget to be loving and respectful to their son’s or brother’s wife. They apparently forget that education does not teach them to suppress someone’s belief system, curtail their aspirations, or command their life. In such unfortunate and indeed unexpected circumstances, delicate relationships go haywire. Education also does not preach double standards where there are contradictory principles set for family members, such as privileges for the daughter and boundaries for the daughter in-law. The situation worsens in cases where an educated sister-in-law (who is a year younger to the daughter in law) acts as the second mother-in-law with her list of pretentious demands. The relationship decays when the same sister-in-law (aka junior mother-in-law) with her obsessive personality meddles in the day-to-day affairs of the married couple. The sister-in-law’s excessive intrusion of the married couple’s privacy puts the couple’s life on the edge. What then is the purpose of being educated if we do not learn to be progressive in our thoughts, or learn to be less self-indulgent and give time to new relationships? It’s like bringing a budding flower from someone else’s garden to replant it in your soil and expecting it to grow without any nurturance. The same flower may survive thinly for a couple of days in your garden, but without love and open air it would ultimately perish. Having the depth to understand such sensitivities in relationships is not just a matter of degree, but a matter of maturity and mindset.
Moreover, violence, carnage, and abuse would have been infinitesimal currents in the life’s oceanic expanse had education been the force behind life’s flow. But the truth is that it is not. Perhaps it is one reason why many educated professionals live a duplicitous life where they perpetually craft ill means to put down others. For instance, many cases of dowry harassment and assault in India involve in-laws who are educated professionals, but have still made their daughter-in law’s life a living hell. Being educated and belonging to respectful families, these in-laws forget to be loving and respectful to their son’s or brother’s wife. They apparently forget that education does not teach them to suppress someone’s belief system, curtail their aspirations, or command their life. In such unfortunate and indeed unexpected circumstances, delicate relationships go haywire. Education also does not preach double standards where there are contradictory principles set for family members, such as privileges for the daughter and boundaries for the daughter in-law. The situation worsens in cases where an educated sister-in-law (who is a year younger to the daughter in law) acts as the second mother-in-law with her list of pretentious demands. The relationship decays when the same sister-in-law (aka junior mother-in-law) with her obsessive personality meddles in the day-to-day affairs of the married couple. The sister-in-law’s excessive intrusion of the married couple’s privacy puts the couple’s life on the edge. What then is the purpose of being educated if we do not learn to be progressive in our thoughts, or learn to be less self-indulgent and give time to new relationships? It’s like bringing a budding flower from someone else’s garden to replant it in your soil and expecting it to grow without any nurturance. The same flower may survive thinly for a couple of days in your garden, but without love and open air it would ultimately perish. Having the depth to understand such sensitivities in relationships is not just a matter of degree, but a matter of maturity and mindset.
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