For the seeds to ripen

I am no skilled gardener but I pot around once a week for about an hour fertilizing the plants with used ground coffee powder and water from washing rice. When certain plants don't seem to flourish I look inside the soil to spot ants or bacteria. However very often I have not the slightest clue why certain plants don't flourish. The plants also seem to take turns to flower along with changing weather conditions. Even though they are all tropical plants different amount of rainfall and sunlight and different combinations of both provide just the right conditions for specific plants to flourish irrespective of the amount or lack of care rendered.

This reminds me of the statement that a seed will ripen when the right conditions are present and stays dormant when the conditions are lacking. Often it is beyond one's control. I think of our country. The soil and fertilizer we have used all along to develop our people worked well in the past decades. The moulding of our people to facilitate the economic strategies of the past decades may prove to be inadequate going forward as "weather conditions have changed". The past education system's emphasis on grades has resulted in what one MP termed as "uninterested learning" and the lack of self directed learning. The focus on engineering and finance to feed business needs and the side lining of liberal arts and humanities may have stunted creative thinking.  Academic achievement (largely through rote learning and short term memory) has in the past provided a direct path to attaining scholarships or a well paid job in the government service and MNCs. In addition our paternalistic government has, as someone puts it, "infantised" the citizens who expect the government to make all decisions and are lazy in thinking. To survive in the new economy however we need people who can think critically and possess curiosity and imagination. The society's mindset against risk and failure now needs to change in order for innovation to thrive.

I was a seed which thrived under conditions where having a hard skill met the business needs of my time. I have very little intellectual curiosity, was very fearful of failure and have great difficulty trying to think out of the box. It surprises me that many of our young still have the same traits which is evident that the soil and nutrients have not changed a lot all these years. I am now fearful that the weather has changed so much that the young seeds of our country will stay dormant. Their inappropriate conditioning may make it hard for them to thrive.