Everyone of us living on this world eventually dies at some time later. When we are born into this world we were never been told how much time we are given, when our time will expire. We were born in certain family condition, with different nurturing way from each other, and it shapes our character as we are now. Have you ever thought that perhaps childhood is the fastest phase in our life? We are not aware of how beautiful childhood are until we are becoming a teenager, trying desperately to cope with adults and taking responsibility where only few people guide us.

If only I could go back being a child, I would. The holiday to beach every semester break, building sandcastle, eating hot dog at the poolside, and swim until sunset. At least that’s what I remembered about my childhood, despite the frustration with math and having little control to the environment around us. When we were a child we were not blamed for doing wrong things, people see it as a normal circumstances to learn and done better next time. We are valued for having creative, out of the box thinking pattern, a way of thinking adults didn’t see. But our school system have a different rules, everything is graded and it determined whether we are passing or not. We are pushed to learn subject we have little interest in instead of improving the subject we are passionate in, school system taught us how the world works. If you are smart and hardworking, you will have a bigger chance to pass the grade, then you will be rewarded for your effort and pass to the next level of difficulty. Sounds familiar?

Our carreer, supposed that we took an office job actually not very different from the school system. We start below and work our way up the system, in turn for our effort, skills, and intelligence (problem solving) we are given a raise of salary (reward). But does it all there is in life? Of course we know the answer is no. Despite some believes that we are living merely to have happiness in our life, I believe every one of us have a bigger purpose in the world. We are supposed in enhance the life quality of people, whether in our local community or in a bigger scale.

Think about how different are the way we live now from the era of our ancestor thousands of year ago. It happens simply because every generation brings improvement to the life quality of humanity. They invented fire, crops, simple tools…. Thousand years later they invented machines, and recently they invented internet. In some way those inventions are improving our life, fire let us cook our meals so we don’t catch diarrhea from bad bactery, machines let us produce more in less time, interner give us broader communication and knowledge. Who knows what will be the next breakthrough in humanity?

There is one thing though that we could do as a part of this generation. To give value in every way we can, as broad as possible, so that as many people may use the knowledge/wisdom/tools we have, now or in the future. Perhaps the most possible way to give value to the next generation is through our children, teaching them skills, giving them knowledge and desire to learn, and taught it all with wisdom in the hope they will use it to teach the next generation. There are countless other way in giving values to humanity and perhaps the most valued are innovation in many fields of living, and those innovators are rewarded decently. The world needs innovators to strive and grow, whose purpose is not merely his life happiness but also the good of greater population. In turn for giving value to others, they are rewarded with happiness itself. The challenge we must face today is whether the current education system supports children to grow into innovators?

This challenge couldn’t be solved only by individual, it took active participaton of the parents, government, policy, and the children inside the system itself.