This post is intended to supplement the post of the same title in SVYM founder’s blog.
"Simple living and high thinking" was Gandhiji’s motto.
But most of the Indians have failed to imbibe that.
And that’s indirectly led to all problems we are facing today.
Education, from the elementary level, is failing to make children think high. That’s because the faculties, the teachers aren’t themselves thinking high. And that’s because the whole system is only very slowly changing.
And where does that change come from? From people who think different, who go down untrodden paths, who communicate and exchange ideas with foreign cultures, who read books other than prescribed textbooks, who embrace the idea of change, and self improvement.
It’s a positive cycle. We stop blaming the system, and improve ourselves. Slowly, the system begins to improve.
And as a student who boastfully regards himself as having broken free from the rat race, I give you a few tips on where to begin.
There’s actually just one tip.
Use the internet. The world wide web.
Read blogs, articles, newspapers, journals, magazines of different geographical regions.
Learn about the culture, ideas, notions, and the system at other places.
Find out interesting leads.
Be willing to change.
And to begin go to google.com (No, I am not paid by google for leading you to them)
Go find out "how to win a nobel prize", "life at MIT", "buddhist philosophy", "barefoot running", "minimalism"
You will soon run out of things to search for. But things keep popping up too.
And while reading you’ll find out new books, blogs, websites, ideas, philosophies, games!, activities, organizations, mailing lists…
Do not skip any. Follow them. Subscribe to blogs, add yourself to mailing lists, play games, do further searches on things.
And you get more pages.
More to read.
More ideas.
And that’s all you have to do.
Slowly, your mind will begin to expand, to see alternate views, to discover solutions that never seemed to exist, to think in new patterns, to imagine, to create, to evolve.
And then you can never go back.