Mediocre or Excellence- Choose wisely.

Finally the last exam of Sa-1. My girl will be able to do what she wants for a week. Yes, unfortunately, only for a week can she remain a girl who just like to lie in bed and read or remain lost in her world of oil pastels, drawing sheets giving life to her imaginations.  After that, same race will start again from the beginning. She will need to get prepared for the next term rectifying all the mistakes ,if any, she has made during her first term exams. From the lessons not prepared well to the subjects she has scored less than what is expected out of her. She will have to give her best shot this time and her tender shoulders will have to carry the weight of fulfilling the expectations of scoring high if not highest.  We all can relate to this as years ago we all may have undergone the same pressure. Many of us may have chosen the stream which was of least interest to us crushing our dreams due to some or the other reasons. Many of us may be regretful of not been able to overcome that fear of failure and gave honest try to what we wanted. And the irony is we still want our children to go through the same pain. We have not yet learn from our past.  We come across many articles/post/ messages on how we should not put pressure on our children and how we should appreciate and encourage them to pursue their dreams. We all seem to agree to it and share those post among our friends and post them on our FB walls but we don't learn anything. When it comes to our child(ren) we want them to run this rat race. By doing this we make them mediocre because we don't let them follow their dreams and pursue their excellence. Intelligence wins over creativity and millions of dreams are nipped in the bud.  Have you ever thought why we love to do this?    Because I think we all measure the success and quality of life in terms of money. Our mindset are limited as we think happiness lies only in big fat bank account. We ourselves lives a machine kind of life and wants our children to do the same.