Acharya Prashant: Whatever you are doing, there has to be honesty in that. What is important is that you do not say one thing and do another thing. If you look at the great scientific discoveries or inventions, the scientist or the explorer would be busy in his chosen area of pursuit having disregarded everything else.
Columbus set out for India. You very well know for how long a period he was sailing the seas, and he was not reaching anywhere. He certainly was not reaching India because he was not even headed towards India! In that period, if you would’ve gone to him and looked at him—the food, the rations, the motivation were all in short supply—you would have said, “This fellow is a fool. He has left everything. In fact, he has left the entire continent for the sake of nothing. Not only that, he is going in the wrong direction as well!” But look at what he got: he got America. He got America because what he was doing was not a pretense; he was doing it sincerely.
At times, there were rebellions on his little ship. People even thought of killing Columbus. They said, “Let us get rid of this man. Just throw him overboard and let us return!” But he persevered.
It doesn’t matter what you are chasing. Be very very sincere. You must know that you are committed to it. You must also be very very assured that you are not blindly chasing something; you must understand that that which you are looking for is important. Discovering an entire continent was important; finding a new sea route to India was important. So, if this fellow feels that there is something very important that he must discover, let him get into it, let him plunge into it.
The only condition is: If you are doing it, do it fully, do it completely, do it honestly.
If you have left behind one kind of life, one kind of job, at least do the other job honestly and diligently. Work really hard.
You have all the right to make a choice, but if you make a choice and don’t do justice to it, then that is very bad. In fact, correction of choices happens only when, first of all, you have fully tried out what you are doing.
Please see. You choose something. Now, unless you dedicate yourself fully to it, how will you know whether your choice is correct? Maybe your choice is incorrect. But if you are not trying out your chosen area in a complete sense, you will always be left with the hope that something is still left to be tried out, so let me stay put, let me not opt out.
Once you make a choice, plunge fully into it. Commit yourself completely. If the choice is misplaced, only then will you come to know that you need to change something.
Do you know why people continue with even wrong choices for very long in their lives? Because they don’t do justice to the right choices, and they don’t do justice even to the wrong choices.
If you have chosen a particular way, go down fully. Cover a lot of distance. That will tell you whether the way, the path, the road that you have chosen is right or not. If you choose a particular road and don’t go far on it, how will you know whether the road is right or wrong?
When you say that you are making a choice, commit yourself fully so that you can quickly change it if the choice turns out to be wrong. Otherwise, you might find that you are spending an entire lifetime just being in the wrong profession, with the wrong people, with the wrong thoughts, with the wrong ideologies, with the wrong habits.
Test, test, and test. That scientific rigor must be there. That spirit of inquiry is essential to the youth. Ask and test. Laziness—you will probably have enough time for that once you are ninety. This is the time for some real hard work; hard work that involves the muscles, and hard work that involves the brain. Columbus had chosen the wrong path, had he not? The navigational path that he opted for would have never brought him to India, or it would have brought him to India only after covering the entire Earth because he was going exactly in the opposite direction: from Europe, instead of coming eastwards, he was actually traveling westwards. But even if he was traveling westwards, he at least had the confidence that he was doing something worthy.
Have that confidence. That confidence can come only from serious questioning and examination. It cannot come from belief. It cannot come from a kind of superstition.
You must never be afraid of questioning others. More importantly, you must never be afraid of questioning yourself. The second part is tougher. It is easy to question others, relatively easy at least. Questioning oneself hurts the ego, but that’s what one must practice.
Question yourself: “What am I doing?” Initially, there might be confusion, but this confusion will lead to clarity. Is it not better to be initially confused than to have false clarity? So, afford a little confusion. That will give you a lot of clarity. A young man and a young woman have to make a lot of decisions. Some of those decisions have consequences for the entire life. Therefore, you must have clarity.
I have seen very very bright people from the best institutions in the country and the world just get lost because they made some awful decisions and persisted with them. The best of the country, the best of the world, even they need to continue questioning themselves. That alone leads to continuous correction and continuous light.
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