How to Change the World

You might remember the essays you used to write in junior school. One of the topics that would require you to scratch your head was that of Ambition. Or, as your junior school teachers tended to elucidate for the benefit of your puerile mind..” What do you want to be when you grow up” 

Now most people want to be doctors or engineers (yes.. that’s the Great Indian Dream). A few want to be rockstars or astronauts. A few want to travel the world and meet new and exotic species of camels. But every so often, some weird kid decides to write an essay on how he would like to change the world. Predictably this kid gets lambasted by his teacher, scores the lowest grade on the paper, and gets a severe bout of head shaking and fist pumping from his parents. But what is really surprising, is the statistics of it all. You see, with an occurrence this rare, in schools across the world, you can be sure that there would be a million such weirdos who would do something like this (Pareto distribution..huh??). And for the million who have the dream in their head, there would be at least a hundred thousand with the necessary talent to pull it off.

But if everything ended there we would be living in an ideal world, and alcohol would be free of cost and professors would be your best friends and drinking buddies. It is really NOT an ideal world, as the most perceptive of you must have already figured out. It is a cancerous world, and we are all living out our own sad little versions of non Hodgkins lymphoma. The point is, of those hundred thousand weird kids who have the dream and the talent to change the world, only five would ever get the chance to make it happen. Three would die early in road accidents involving Yamaha bikes. One would die accidentally while trying to plug her hair dryer into a two pin socket with no earthing. And the ONE, would grow depressed, and question his motivation at every single point in his life.

In the end, that is what it all boils down to..motivation. Very few people with the wherewithal (the REAL talent, not the sort of shit that passes off as talent these days) to change the world are actually concerned about money, so there that goes down the drain. And even fewer are motivated by power and prestige and the ability to become their own personal version of God. What most people would like though, is recognition, and a little bit of appreciation.

And this is where everything falls apart. The world, you see, is made up of idiots. And in the end, if you are looking to them for motivation, you are bound to come up short in some respect or the other. Most people would not appreciate the changing of the world, albeit for the better, because most people love to be safely ensconced in the security of their own static world. Most people also tend to appreciate people like themselves, which means idiots would earn most of the acclaim from the other idiots of this world.

The motivation to change this world should not hinge on the appreciation or recognition you get from it. The world is a thankless creature, and would do anything to ensure the status quo is maintained. The motivation should hinge on your own personal satisfaction, dear weirdo, to be able to stand up to yourself one day, and say that you did it.

You changed the world.