At a wedding dinner recently, some people spoke disparagingly
about the younger generation.
“They’re too lazy”, said
one.
“There really is no hope for them now,” said a third man. So I
thought deeply on whether the younger generation is
as idle and useless as
these older men portrayed.
I know that when I
started my career, those who were 20 years senior to me would laugh at my
mistakes.
“You don’t know how to
work hard,” my boss would say.
“A little bit of effort
and research, and you wouldn’t have made a stupid mistake like that,” he would
say.
“It’s watching too much
TV that makes you so inefficient,” said a manager.
And
they all thought that my generation wouldn’t do as well as they did, that it
would be a miracle if we didn’t turn into drug addicts.
And
so it will always be. I belong to a generation which appeared to have a bright
future. A new country had
emerged, and we all wanted serve Pakistan. In our formative years, we had to
work hard at our studies. If we didn’t do our homework, we would receive a
sound thrashing on our butts with a hard cane. In those days, no one had heard
of the rights of children. Books were rare and
expensive, and we had to travel long distances in public buses and sit in libraries,
making notes (unlike today, when everything is available with a click of the
mouse). If we had a cold and fever, our parents would take us to doctors only
in emergencies (usually the nearest doctor was many kilometres away).
Telephones were not common, so we had to be back from play by sunset, so our
parents wouldn’t have to worry.
One sentence I heard my
boss say will always remain in my mind,
“I don’t care whether
you got up late, or you missed the bus, or it was raining heavily and your
house was flooded, all I know is that you didn’t complete your work on time.
Next time this happens, stay at home, you’ll get your termination letter by
post.”
And so we were always on
our toes, working even on holidays to ensure that we kept our jobs.
So,
despite all odds, we did manage to succeed. And I have no doubt that the
generation that has replaced us will also do well. I see young men and women
under forty who are already in responsible jobs, doing their best to ensure
that they excel in their work. Of course, there are a few here and there who
have dropped out and don’t earn enough, but such people have always been there,
in every generation. So, I have every reason to believe that we should not
worry about the young men and women of today, I’m sure they too will leave the world a
better place than they inherited.
Shakir Lakhani
Engineer,
former visiting lecturer at NED Engineering College, industrialist, associated
with petroleum/chemical industries for many years. Loves writing, and (in the
opinion of most of those who know him), mentally unbalanced. He tweets
@shakirlakhani (twitter.com/shakirlakhani)
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/45196/are-millennials-doomed-to-failure/
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