"Too much emphasis is placed on role models. Instead of copying others, people should learn to think and act independently and thus make the choices that are best for them."

It is quite a funny incident from the childhood days, but I would fail to do justice to my opinion on this issue if I didn’t mention it here. Back in the fifth grade, one of my teachers asked our class a very dreamy question as far as a mind of a young one is concerned. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ Somebody said I want to become an actor. ‘Like?’. ‘Well I want to become an actor like Aamir Khan.’. The teacher told the kid that to become an actor as successful as Aamir Khan, he must choose him as his role model, and try to follow his footsteps. There and then the child became obsessed with the idea. He went back home, saw his entire movie collection, read articles about what his daily routines are and other stuff that appealed to him. Years later I saw him participate in a play and wondered if Aamir was present at that moment and somebody told him that he was being imitated, he might just hang himself to death.

After this incidence, and many others I realized that people just wanted to be somebody else—someone if they knew personally, they mightn’t want to be. When I contemplate on this observation, I often end up criticizing the entire process of child education. I recall all those incidences of parents and teachers telling their kids to be some famous personality. Little do they know that the mind of a child is too delicate and gullible. Once he decides a role model, he starts daydreaming of a life where he actually is like him. And that is really difficult to achieve especially when the child and his role model do not share the same area of talent.

Even if I talk of the issue in a more psychologically inclined manner, since the child does not directly know his role model, he will assume a lot of data. May be the child reads about the hardships his role model went through in his life, he may never know the behavioral changes that were the outcomes of those hardships. He would have no way of knowing how his role model would react if in situations like the ones the child faces. And still the child, under the impression, that following the footsteps of somebody he worships, would lead him to the place of his dreams.

In all this chaos, I do not understand one thing. Why do we have to be like someone else? Why when we as a child say things like—I want to become Neil Armstrong, I want to become Mahatma Gandhi, I want to become Johhny Depp, I want to become ‘him’—are not stopped by our more educated and experienced teachers and parents. Contrary to this, they are in most cases motivated. No matter the child performs ridiculously, he still is still told to be patient and pertinacious and wait for the positive brunt of his actions.

I imagine a world where in we just be ourselves. A world wherein every person’s unique creativity is not eclipsed by the more powerful desire of being like somebody else, would most definitely keep every individual at content with his life. I hope one day we learn to respect others for who they are and not expect them to become an illusionary character.