Written By Diya Barmecha (Grade 8)
As one of my favourite movies depicts, the years that students are in school are years of constant pressure, competition and compartmentalisation. The movie, ‘3 Idiots’ explained how throughout these years there are many decisions to be made and many things to be prioritised. Within these years, the constant high-pressure environment makes it feel like a pressure cooker where each student is getting cooked under the pressure placed in the metal box, unable to escape.
This stress stems from the little insecurities we have. The idea of fitting in, being the best or even balancing a social and academic life. The stress that comes up from these years carry on to your adult life. This can result in self-harm, stress-induced anxiety or even depression.
In a nation like India where the stigma of the mental health disorder is as high as the pressure that surrounds each child, living becomes harder than the solution. This difficult journey where some feel that fighting is not the easy way out, give up. In situations like this more than the person suffering, those around them do. Each person is a complicated set of network chains, entangled in different experiences and people. These people and experiences will be affected by a domino effect, knocking each person down to their knees.
When alive and breathing, a person’s value is underestimated. Their importance is taken for granted. However, when they are no longer alive is when their loss is truly felt. It is not when the day is bright or when the cities are buzzing that people are missed, it is at night when you lie under your covers, alone, when reality hits. With the value of people being so minimal, it is also easy for those with previously induced stress to underestimate their value in others’ lives, causing their stress and anxiety to increase.
Through this, it is clear how not only the school plays a role in making a student’s life a pressure cooker but also social life and the familial life. It is all of these forces playing out together at once. During teenage years when your body and emotions are changing it is hard to keep track of your own persona, let alone take decisions keeping in mind others’ emotions.
In this complicated journey which is life, it is hard to stay afloat, and so like Dory the fish said, it is easier to just keep swimming. No matter what the outcome is or what sorrows we are drowning, it is important to just keep swimming.
Featured Image Courtesy – Cedars-Sinai