Many of us live a routine life. We have a weekly routine, where the weekdays are spent toiling in the office and the weekends reserved for relaxation and something fun. The only thing that matters to most people is sticking to this routine. We invest all our intellectual capacity into making our lives go according to plan, a routine. A line from the Dark Knight is relevant here, where the Joker says 'Nobody will be upset if I tell them a hundred soldiers will die in a war tomorrow. But if I tell them one little mayor is gonna die, there's chaos!'. If we have projected failure into our plans and made room for it, there is no ill-feeling or regret about the failure. All my Engineering friends will agree that the lower their expectations from an exam, the lesser they study. This keeps us happy, right? Its good to lower your expectations and feel good than have high ambitions and feel bad if you fail, right? What's the problem here?

The problem is that we are turning deaf ears and blind eyes to things that matter to us. I read an article in Newsweek recently that gave a detailed account of how a bachelor's degree beats down the ambitions of those that pursue it. The article ended with the line 'Teenagers go to college wanting to be the President of the USA, and come out accepting that they're not good enough'. This is true in my college too. A lot of us were highly ambitious at the time of joining, and were hanging on tenterhooks by the time we reached final year and were willing to take up any half-decent job offer made to us or join any half-decent University that accepted us. Why is it that a college education, that is supposed to enhance our personality and add value to ourselves draining us of our desire and ambition?

This is happening because we are afraid to fail; afraid to fall out of our routine; afraid to re-think our plans or make a new one altogether; afraid to stand up for ourselves and the things that matter to us. We live a life dominated by inhibitions. This is the primary reason that every single friend of mine who consumes alcohol has cited for doing so. Very few people make life changing decisions when they're drunk, and while making these decisions is when we need to have no inhibitions. This is when we need to stand up for things that matter to us. Our life is a farce, otherwise.