When did I let my dreams die?

I was watching a Tamil movie, I don’t recall the name now, and it had an intriguing question: “What is the expiry date of a woman’s dream?”

The daughter asked this question on behalf of her mother, and it set me thinking, when do we humans decide to let go of our dreams? And why? Not just women, in my observation, almost every human being starts to compromise and believes that they cannot afford to or should not gun for their dreams anymore.

Happiness achieved through job and family life helps us forget our other dreams because at the end of the day, the core aim of one and all is to be happy. If this is not achieved then time and again, like one recurring irritant this feeling of lack haunts us. These are moments when we implode and introspect or explode and blame circumstances.

I am the former kind of person who picks a corner and takes a deep dive within, to search what happened, when and where and if I could have changed anything. Peeling the layers one by one I realized that no one could impel anyone to let go of anything. Most of the time it is our upbringing which has conditioned us in a certain way and because of which we naturally make some choices.

Parents thrusting their dream on their progeny or making their career choices is very akin to Indian parenting style. In the west, there is a different kind of conditioning. Children at a young age are taught self-reliance and independence.  They are seemingly encouraged to explore and yet with this pressure of having to provide for themselves most of them park their dreams aside and look for alternative, quick-money-making options. The number of students who quit their studies or don’t have the urge to complete their graduation is alarming and immensely saddens me.

An American journal writes:

54% of college dropouts claim that the difficulty of balancing a work-study arrangement has caused them to leave college.  https://research.com/universities-colleges/college-dropout-rates#3

Can’t we have a blend of Indian parenting while holding their hand and allowing them to explore, like in the West? Maybe they won’t need to sacrifice our dreams nor theirs?