How to make difficult choices? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Question: If a student has to select a stream after class twelfth and he is interested in both medical and engineering, how does he select the stream without thinking about the future?
Speaker: See, the problem is that we make our choices by looking at the future. We make our choices just in the way a man purchases land. Do you know how do people make investments in land?
Listeners (in one voice): By predicting the future prospects.
Speaker: Yes. And in a similar way, we make life choices. We ask: ‘Whether doing this will be helpful in the *future*or not?’
Do you see that there is no love in this; there is only calculation.
Now, you cannot live your life through calculations. It is alright if you are purchasing a share, a stock, or a piece of land. There you can look at the future; you must look at the future probably, because you purchase these for the sake of money. Don’t you ask: ‘How much money will I get when I will sell it?’ So it is alright to be concerned about the future in this case. But that is not the way you decide your career. You don’t ask: ‘What is it that would keep me happy while working?’ No! That’s not the way you pick up a life partner, a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You don’t say that this person is going to earn a lot in the future, so I must hitch up with him. No! But unfortunately, a lot of us do this. We often ask: ‘What is the earning prospect of this groom?’
That’s not the way you choose a How do you pick up a life partner, a boy friend or a girl friend? By looking at the future? That this guy is going to earn so much in future, so let me choose him or her. A lot of people do that also, ‘What are the earning prospects of the groom?’
This is a very rotten way of living! Don’t you think so; what do you think? You want to live your life this way? So you meet up someone and you ask: ‘How much are you going to earn? So much! Oh! Come close, I want to hug you.’
(The audience laughs.)
Is this how you want your life to be?
(A moment of silence)
Understand this: work life and love life are very parallel. Work is love !
You are talking about these difficult choices between regarding medical or engineering , whether doctor or engineer. How much time do you spend working; have you ever thought about it? Have you ever looked into it? Do you know how much time you would spent working? Have you ever thought about it? One works for ten hours a day, Even when one is not actively working, the mind may still be there. Take away the sleeping hours, and you will see that you spend seventy-five percent to eighty percent of your life working.
Work is life!
You cannot pick up work by calculating how much will it pay you and all other such things. You said choices are difficult. Choices are difficult because you calculate. Choices are not at all difficult when you look at what makes you happy ; you just have to know them. Choices are difficult because the future is unpredictable and you want to predict it and then you get confused.
‘I am thirsty and I want to drink water.’ Is the choice difficult? I just know that I am thirsty and I know that kerosene oil will not quench my thirst. What will you say of me if I say : ‘I am so thirsty and I am confused whether I should drink water or Sodium carbonate or kerosene oil some other stuff?’
That is the way we are leading our lives. Even when we are thirsty, we do not know that only water can satisfy me. Only water! We are still confused.
(Mockingly ) Some liquid nitrogen, please. May be that can help me. What will you say of such a man who is confused about what to drink when he is thirsty?
When you are thirsty, just drink water .
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
