Hey Youth! Complain all you want! Yet, the value is when you take action
Why I don’t want to give up on Sri Lanka yet, no matter how green the grass is over on the other side!
Trust me when I say, THE GRASS IS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE if you live in Sri Lanka. Many Sri Lankans admire that grass on the other side. The greenness of it, the well trimmed and orderly layout over the fence. Yes, many of us are attracted to it. If your skills are more valued overseas and are welcomed with open arms as a skilled worker, many ask “Why not?”. Not by boats, but by plane loads Sri Lanka loses a great deal of high skilled workers to the lushness over the fence. Yet, no Sri Lankans that remain on this side can blame them. It is the only rational cause of action to take. There is no cause or reason for any who do seek the lushness over the fence to feel guilty either. Migration is a natural phenomena. What sparks the great masai mara migration is fundamentally what sparks great human migrations. The scale and facade of the issues are totally different, but ultimately the outflow of human skill labour from Sri Lanka is based on the same fundamentals. Specifically the grass here is dying, it’s not well managed and hardly usable. i.e Our systems still need a lot of improvement to meet the expectation of its citizens.
Oh yes! We have tons of things to complain about! Too many in fact. I have been on the other side of the fence, and know just how much we are missing out by being here. Yet, I don’t want to leave this land yet. I have not given up on the grass that is on this side of the fence. To give a small indication, our public transportation is a reminder of what hell might look like. Obtaining services from some government institutes can be described as challenging. Implementation of law and order is selective and left to the discretion of few. The media cries for freedom when they want to be the victims, yet, even when they find that freedom chose to remain silent when their corporate sponsors are found with their pants down. Worse: Skilled workers feel they can do more overseas than here. They feel a foreign country can use their skill more than this land.
I ain’t against complaining. It would be ridiculous to ignore all these dysfunctionalities and live in an illusion. Yet, what I want, what I wish everyone else want is to look at the grass on this side of the fence, and think “What can we do to make it greener?”. We have engineers, doctors, few passionate administrators, visionaries, a civilisation that can be traced back in millennials. Why can’t we simply look around and go “What can I do to solve that problem?”. I know the complaint that follows : “Who will support me in solving these? Not the government, not my fellow citizens trying to get by, not the civil administrators still living in 1800”. True, these are all challenges, but that is what we have to overcome. The best innovations arise in challenging environments. We need to push back as much as we are pushed against a corner. The youth here are brimming with energy, yet sometimes I feel like all they want to do is complain. Why not exercise that energy instead to solve some fundamental problems we complain about?
Three months ago I quit my very stable, not so boring job as a Lead Software Engineer to start my very own firm. The most amusing phenomena I remembered at that instance was the amount of emails and phone calls that came in inquiring when I would be moving to Australia! Hey, don’t get me wrong, Australia is a great place for entrepreneurs and anyone in the software industry. Yet, that was not my vision. I want to establish something in Sri Lanka. The place I call home (and I know every emigrant would proudly hold in their hearts). It is with the vision of creating solutions to firms here and globally that led me to create Cerisen Technologists. A consultancy and software development company. Special focus taken to seek visionaries with ideas that can be turned into software products. Software products that will be built for Sri Lankans as well as for the rest of the world. Software alone can’t solve the problems we are facing, but it’s what I would like to see as my small contribution. If it ever would meet my own expectations, is yet to be seen. Yet that is what we will be working for.
Maybe, we ourselves don’t have the complete capability to solve some issues. We might lack competence, experience or the proper tools to identify and solve issues. Even if that is the case, look to the right of you, look to the left of you, if you see a colleague or a friend with that competency, encourage them! Lead them, mentor them or at the least support them with what you are competent with! We as youth need to breakaway from the mediocrity of complaining. We must learn to complain, then have fun solving it and finally live!
Sure, the grass is greener on the other side! It’s upto us to step up and see what we can do individually and collectively to make the grass greener on this side. At the very least we might achieve some success. Who knows? maybe even in failure we might achieve a small change that someday might turn into something awesome. We must try. Try before our natural urge to migrate takes over. If I fail, all I can say is: “See you down under mate!”
