Gen Z(ee) minds:Waiting to be ignited,to be inspired

 

 

IN YEAR 2026, multiple questions and challenges confront Gen Z(ee). Multiple opportunities, too, would waltz into their lives -- ready to be grabbed and utilised. How do members of Gen Z(ee) look at such a scenario? A little search reveals that a good number of Gen Z(ee) members have to try hard to think correctly on this subject. By no standard can this be considered to be a happy situation. When the loud-thinker sought to discuss the issue with a few young people born necessarily after 2005, he felt surprised that many of them -- a majority -- had not been taught and encouraged to think properly about their roads ahead and the challenges and opportunities that life would offer. Most of the young people the loud-thinker talked to had only one concern -- a good job (and naturally a cushy job that did not claim much of their energy but offered GREAT returns).

 

Very few -- a thin minority -- had any idea of a career or how to build a career. Some of them did have some vague ideas -- but the system (at home and in schools and colleges) had not prepared them to face serious and larger issues of life. This experience of the engagement with some young people, of course, matched to a large extent with the actual work-life experience the loud-thinker has gathered over years at ‘The Hitavada’. Over time, he has come up with an impression that the Gen Z(ee) members have only a superficial approach to challenges of life. Some of them do demonstrate certain seriousness about the challenges and opportunities of life, all right, but a majority of them are pretty non-serious, and are willing to give up when challenges confront them and claim a lot of their energies and time. That life deserves a much deeper and serious and consistent and persistent handling of challenges and opportunities does not seem to occupy their considerations.

 

So, even if the Gen Z(ee) members have decent opportunities, they switch jobs at the drop of a hat -- generally for a little more money (giving an impression that even at those early stages of life, money is all they work for). This is one of the principal reasons why countless numbers of Gen Z(ee) members do not opt for jobs in Defence Forces (which they erroneously feel do not pay well -- but claim a lot more effort that what they are capable of making). Other jobs, too, do not pay enough, but are easier to handle. So, be it that way -- they say. This scenario has multiple angles, multiple dimensions, multiple questions. All of those would require a lot of research to understand the psyche, especially of the Gen Z(ee) members. After engaging more than a 100 young people, the loud-thinker felt that a lot of very serious work would have to be done by the larger society to correct the flaws in young minds so that they can match the expectations and descriptions that Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam offered in his iconic book ‘The Ignited Minds’.