I had the chance of visiting two places in the country last week. The first visit was to the stock market and the second was to a factory, which produces food items for schools.
There was, as you might imagine, a huge difference. While people waste money, effort and even leave their jobs because of disturbances in the stock market, the opposite happens in the factory.
With machines running, time becomes a critical factor for producing the items and not a single minute passes without production. And when you observe the way these machines operate in order to mix, cut, fill out and wrap while workers supervise every step carefully, provide the machines with what is required, receive what is produced and then distribute it, you feel that there is life in this place and death in the other one.
Production is a very powerful secret and a very complicated equation. At the same time it is a magic word and an easy solution for past and future problems. And maybe because we don’t really see the way factories fulfill their functions, we don’t really think deeply when we want to invest. We turn to something that is easy and quick and brings plenty of money without effort or waiting.
None of it, however, really builds the future or develops the nation. It is easy nowadays to consume manufactured goods that come from different parts of the world, even the smallest and the simplest things we use every day.
People who don’t know our religion or our language manufacture our thobes, abayas and prayer mats. What they do understand is the language of manufacturing and commerce; they realize very well that the public wants what it consumes and will pay for it. They also understand that money circulating in the stock market won’t shelter a refugee or provide them with shelter.
The real meaning of manufacturing is what we really need and must pay attention to. If we weren’t able to make our generation aware of it, then the next generation must be.
I truly advise every parent, teacher, school and educational institute to organize regular trips to introduce the students to factories and what happens in them.
Students should relate to factories emotionally by listening to the sound of machines working so that when they start thinking of investing their money, they know where to put it and what their investments should be. Maybe the next generation will be the one to wear what they make and eat what they plant.
As for the current generation, let us just let them be in the whirlwind of stock markets and the green and red signs. Let us try to find excuses and justifications for the teacher who abandons classroom, the doctor who abandons patients and the employee who leaves his or her job in search of quick and easy money in the stock market.
Maybe they don’t really realize that luck doesn’t build a nation or a country and luck doesn’t just happen to create a bright future.
