Fight hard and forget the difference between victory and defeat || (2021)

Questioner (Q): Sir, in a lot of your talks you redirect our focus towards ourselves. As living beings, all of us seek contentment and happiness. So, my question to you is, how can one be content without being complacent? How does one achieve that?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, complacency can be there only when you have just not bothered to enquire into the facts of your life. Otherwise, it is impossible to be smug and ultra-confident about your state. None of us, factually, are in a great state internally. It is an unfortunate fact, but a fact is a fact.

So, there is sickness, dissatisfaction, incompleteness, psychosis, anxiety, fear. And when the placement season comes, then we are jittery, and if the next fellow gets a higher pay package, then we become jealous. We know all these things are there, and knowing all these things, if we still certify ourselves to be internally healthy, then there is something very wrong with our compass of honesty. Either that, or we are so afraid that we just don’t even want to enquire within.

“Am I okay? Why did I just start trembling? I am standing in front of that interview room—let’s say it is a day-zero company—and I suddenly find myself weak in the knees and shaking in my trousers. Why is that happening?” And it is a very real happening; it is actually physical. You can’t even say that it was inside, so you didn’t see; it is there in the body, you can’t deny its presence. But having seen all that, if we still want to insist that we are happy, then there is a great problem.

Now, coming to contentment. Contentment is the very last thing. At your stage in life, as a young person, you should have a lot of dissatisfaction—a lot of dissatisfaction—because if you settle at the point you already are inwardly, outwardly, within, without, then you would be settling at a very suboptimal point. Your potential is far higher. So, there is no point talking of contentment at this age because being what we are, at this age and stage, we don’t even know what contentment is; we are bound to misinterpret it.

So, leave contentment for a later stage. At this point, rebel and rise. See what confines you and don’t accept it; fight it out, and don’t bother too much for the result. If you have given a good fight, then the word ‘contentment’ can probably kick in, in the sense that “I did the utmost I could. Beyond this, it was not possible for me to do anything. Honestly, I say that there is nothing that I held back; I gave the fight more than what I had.” Now you can probably be contented—contented not in the sense that the fight is over, but contented in the sense that now you are ready for the next and bigger fight.

Final contentment is final deliverance; it is liberation, actually. So, do not talk of that. When I talk to young people, it is much more advisable that they look at things and challenge them, question them. Believe me, and you need not actually believe me because you see this thing with your own eyes: much in the world today needs to be challenged and demolished. Just do not be easily satisfied.

Q: But we are living in a very goal-oriented, outcome-driven world. How does one achieve that detachment of giving one’s best while not being focused on the result?

AP: No, it is not detachment really; I would say you have to be in love with your war, your action. If you are challenging something, if you have taken up an enormous project, be in love with it. I am not talking of detachment; I am talking of love here. Be in love with your work and give it just everything that you have. For that you would, first of all, require the work to be that enormous and that loveable.

In anything that you enter, in anything that you take up, the quality of the relationship must be so high that you are encouraged, that you are left choiceless in attending to it. You cannot hold yourself back. You will not say, “Now it is 6 p.m., so I must get up from my seat and leave” or that, “In this task, I was supposed to contribute only so much and no more.” Give it all that you have. And once you have given it all that you have, you will find that you will be left with very little time, space, or energy to bother about the result.

See, bothering about the result is an energy-intensive affair, is it not? You may take three hours just preparing for an exam, and then you may keep worrying about the result for thirty days. Worrying, brooding, and thinking about the result—all this consumes a lot of our lives. Now, if you are worrying about the outcome, I would say, why do you have spare time at all? Why has this time, firstly, not been utilized in the action itself? And if you say, “Well, the deed is done, now I have spare time,” I will say, what about the next and the higher deed? Why are you squandering away even one moment of this precious but limited life? How come you have the time?

So, when one is madly in love, when one is intensely in action, then the outcome becomes immaterial. Not because one is indifferent or detached; no, it is not a case of detachment; it is a case of intense love. “I gave everything that I had; now it is difficult to differentiate between defeat and victory.” You could say the one who could differentiate between these two, the one who could be affected by the outcome is left with nothing to be affected with; he held back nothing. He gave everything that he/she had.

Think of a six-hour Wimbledon final, or a seven-hour match—we have had matches like that. The loser, believe me, does not really regret that match. I have read of Grand Slam champions who, when asked about their most unforgettable match, would not talk about one of their Grand Slam finals or semifinals; they would talk about one match that they fought and lost. Now, that is one match that they cannot forget. That is one match that brought life to them as never before, because that was the match that drained everything out of them. And finally, when the winning shot was played, neither side could differentiate between victory and defeat.

As a spectator, you would mind who held the trophy, and only one of the two parties is now carrying the trophy, so you would say, “Oh well, Nadal won and Federer lost.” But ask them, who have just played a five-setter that has extended up to six hours or seven hours; they will say, “Well, this is my most unforgettable match. I do not remember who won or who lost—that is something I won’t remember. But the match I can’t forget.”

That’s the way to live life. Live so intensely that in the end you are left with no energy to be concerned with the result. And that does not mean that you will necessarily meet defeat; sometimes there is victory, sometimes there is defeat, but that is not the point. The point is how you have played the game.

Play it with all your might; it raises you like anything. It raises you to enter a bigger game, a higher game—and that’s the game.

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