THE SPEAKING TREE
Why Make Examinations Larger-Than-Life Events?
Pulkit Sharma
03.12.2021
It is commonplace to experience anxious thoughts, negative emotions, obsessive rituals, sleepless nights and butterflies in the stomach during examination time. Moderate levels of stress motivate us to work hard, overcome our limitations and give our best performance. However, when we are overly distressed, our worries can make us dysfunctional at the physical, emotional and behavioural levels. Consequently, an inner sense of vulnerability and hopelessness incapacitates us, stopping us from listening to the voice of reason. During this time, we may feel like a complete failure and see no hope in making an effort.
As a society which now believes firmly in competing, achieving and winning, we have erroneously turned examinations into larger-than-life events. We seem to have forgotten that an examination is just an innocuous assessment to tell us how well we have grasped a particular curriculum and where we need to improve in that specific programme. Whatever be the results of an examination, they can never change who we are and what we eventually do in our lives. Therefore, whenever we are stressed, we must remind ourselves that it is just one exam and in our long life, it is not going to be the end of the world. Life will give us many other chances to grow and evolve into a better person.
Letting go of this immense pressure, breathing out our worries and smiling freely during examinations is the right approach.
Comparing ourselves with others builds a lot of fear in our psyche and derails our progress. Rather than thinking about either defeating others or getting defeated by them, we should drop this unhealthy thought process and make self-perfection our long-term goal. Let us always strive to improve ourselves, working hard on overcoming our weaknesses and realising our inherent potential.
Give up smaller, mundane goals to pursue a higher ideal is the key. We can create a broad vision by visualising a better self imagining a healthy body, a strong mind, a happier self, harmonious relationships and a meaningful life. Reminding ourselves of this vision and working on it consistently will take us closer to the transcendent point of psychic evolution.
At a larger level, we also need to introspect and reform our education system. We seem to be teaching children almost everything apart from who they are, what the purpose of their birth is, how they can fulfil it, and how they can know themselves better. These questions are generally dismissed as being too esoteric for young minds and it is implied that such concerns fall outside the purview of modern education systems. But without such opportunities for inner reflection and deeper self-knowledge, our children end up wasting their energies in trivial pursuits and worrying about pointless things. Later in life, when some of them realise this, it is too difficult for them to abandon flawed assumptions and start afresh.
We need our children to be in a perpetual state of fulfilment, growth, tranquillity and joy regardless of the ups and downs of their life. Therefore, let us think of ways to empower them so that they awaken from their present state of ignorance and pursue the fullness inherent within them.
The writer is a clinical psychologist in Puducherry
