Yesterday I attended Children’s Film Festival and had opportunity to address children on this occasion. Cinema is the biggest and most watched visual platform and one which has greatest influence on youth psychology. Hence youth of all times has set the heroes and heroines as iconic figures worth imitating.

Hence it was a difficult address as many want to join the film industry for easy glamour that they associate with it .

I told them a story of my own child hood experience where at there age i too had an identity crisis and wanted to get popular and known amongst my peer group . The easiest way was to participate in all the clubs and association of school and become popular . But i had no merit and was thrown from all of them .

The dejection and rejection strengthened my resolve and with lots of perseverance i moved in the direction of acquiring merit .

The youth should aim at acquiring merit and working for self . For most of the times it so happens that we want to prove to the world and gain chair and status but in this process we forget that the day our work starts giving us satisfaction and our dreams sleep less nights that very day our success is achieved .

The work should bring immense satisfaction and this journey of hard work is the most pleasure able experience of life .

Name , fame , wealth will follow suit but they are secondary – the primary goal is to work for self – to gratify the self and to achieve accolades for the self and from the self .

Creativity acquires godly status when it is performed for self gratification and a performance when it is for audiences.

A writer writes because the thoughts in his mind starts haunting him not to sleep , a dancer performs to be in communion with nature – same for singer, painter, theater artist – u name all and u get all .

Food cooked with passion becomes godly otherwise it is just another meal .

So no craft is small – only our heart should be in it .

It is time we start teaching our children the value of dedication and commitment for self , associated with self growth then only the work acquires the perfection akin to a godly status .

We should not let go of our dreams at any stage , for we are what our dreams make us .

Every individual is different for his thought process and dreams are different hence we should focus on self growth and the success will follow suit .

-Mamta Mehrotra