Life Rule: Get good grades, get a good job and settle down for a life-time of earnings, a good comfortable pension and then a job for one of our children after your death.

Let us examine whether the above Life Rule statement stands true in today’s world. Is there any alternate way of earning which is more suitable for the changing times? If we can have any one example which contradicts the Life Rule given above, can we start our re-thinking process? The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.” ~ Susan Sontag

Why start thinking new thoughts? Why associate with people who live differently? “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” ~ Frank Outlaw

(a) Good grades:

Thomas Alva Edison: In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother then home schooled him.

So Thomas Alva Edison did not “get good grades” in the conventional school system.

What did he achieve? Edison was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. He was dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter. “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.” ~ Albert Einstein

I am not against education, only stating the fact that mere good grades does not ensure success in life. All recruiters and managers give more weightage for EQ rather than IQ, Financial Quotient is mandatory to accumulate wealth. Both EQ and FQ are out of syllabus of our schools and colleges. Do we get training at home? Think …

(b) Get a good job:

If Dhirubhai Ambani and Bill Gates had taken up a job, we would not have great companies like Reliance and Microsoft … The giving hand is much better than the hand that receives. Giving others jobs is naturally better than receiving a hand-out or a salary as per whatever the boss decides should be the maximum salary.

What is the definition of a”good” job? Mere loads of money and on call 24x7, or average amount of salary and free in the evenings? Work throughout the night at BPOs, affecting the health, mindset, accumulation of not wealth but stress …

Re-examine and define what YOU want out of a good job. Everyone will have different requirements. Think, analyze.

(c) Settle down for a life-time of earnings:

I know that there is no need for any example for this: the recession of recent times, the inflation rates that make us poorer today when we earn the same amount that we earned last year: these 2 are factors which we are all aware of.

(d) Good comfortable pension:

Many companies do not have a pension plan, those that do give a pension the amount is a very small percentage of the last take-home pay … the worst punishment that a retiree gets is loss of recognition, loneliness and being shunted out by society.

(e) Support to family after our death:

Most companies do not have any plan to give family pensions or give any monthly pay packet to the family of their staff members. Few companies may have the option of giving a job to one family member of the deceased.

So … do we really need a job to live? or is it that we need some vehicle which will just take care of all the above 5 aspects of the purpose of earnings?

Finally, let us remain educated wrt this article as per Aristotle’s definition of an educated mind: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”. ~ Aristotle