MOTIVATION VS INSPIRATION

                                  MOTIVATION VS INSPIRATION

The word “Motivation” is very popular in our society presently. It has created a big market in India and abroad. Several gurus, instructors and trainers are hired by the corporate world for purchasing “Motivation” for their employees; our education system has also adopted it enthusiastically.

                    In past, even few years back, it was inspiration which played an important role to mankind. Generally the youngster used to be inspired by great leaders and social reformers who would work for the welfare of society without expecting anything, but all of a sudden; the scene has changed and motivation has taken the chair ousting inspiration from our lives.

               Basically, inspiration is a spontaneous feeling which arouses for doing something without having any personal expectations or desire of achievements. On the contrary, motivation is a stimulation or push, given deliberately by someone to achieve something. Motivation itself has a great value, but the way it has encroached our lives is dangerous. It is making our society ruthless and tyrant. The whole humanity is being educated to achieve goals, targets, and ranks and so on, which has made our society blindly ambitious and madly competitive. The ridiculous thing is that all the efforts are made for good for nothing, as they have no business with our beautiful life. Now the question arises,” how has it has encroached our lives?” The answer is simple. Observe our daily affairs and we will see that it has trespassed our lives because of increasing impatience and fear, and with the same impatience and fear, we educate and nurture our children.

As it is said “the child is father of the man” from his early childhood, a child is taught not to do anything which does not pay him. Our impatience and fear do it so. For instance, if a child does not study or score good marks in the examination, we usually motivate him saying if he gets good marks, he will be rewarded with a video game, a camera etc. This is the first step where he starts to expect reward for his doing. Even, it has been seen that a child is rewarded for speaking truth, for helping others and so on. By the time he grows up, he learns not to do anything which does not pay or reward him. In these circumstances, how can we think of a man who will help parents, society or the whole man kind without any expectation as our ancestors like Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Ravindranath Tagore did ? If we recall our scriptures e.g. the Vedas, the Geeta which give the massage, “ do but don’t worry for achievements and consequences” only then we can sense our mistake that we have forgotten the basic principles of life which are true to the whole mankind for ages .If we want to remove cut throat competitions, psychological abnormalities, terrorism, wars, etc, from our society, we should root out the wrong education which is the result of our impatience and fear. Why are we in a haste to achieve something or have fear to lose it? We all are like Tom (desires) who is chasing after Jerry (achievements) and it never comes in our hands, aren’t we? Let’s think and check where we are faulty!