My Life, My Rules
Questioner: Good evening, Sir, my name is Yashasvi Dwivedi. I’m currently pursuing chemical engineering. My question is, till what level it’s fair to say, ‘it’s my life, my rules’, and not going by social and generational norms to meet family’s expectations?
Acharya Prashant: You can say that till the final level, you can say that even in an absolute sense, provided it’s you who is authentically saying that. Often the rebellion we raise against the society is itself a social thing. Often the rebellion we pose to a society is itself very social and has social objectives.
See, it’s like this. This is the society, right? The hundred out of you, you are the society and I am the rebel, I am the great rebel. So, I rebel against you and I say, “You know, all of you have been stupid, from Newton till Einstein, all of you have been stupid, you know nothing. From Socrates till Sartre, all of you have been stupid, you know nothing, and I am the only original one. I am the only genuine one, I am the young rebel.” And so, I declare that I am not one of you and I am a renegade and I move over to this side here. I am not one of you and what do I do here? No, not just hide, I have one eye on...
It’s the common phenomenon you know this, right? We all do this. “I am not one of you, I am boycotting you.” What am I doing? I am seeing who is impressed, I am seeing who is impressed. And if someone is impressed, I would probably you know just furtively beckon from here, “Oh, that one is impressed. Come, come join my kingdom.”
It’s not that I am rebelling against the society. I am so much a fan of the society actually that I want to create one more society with myself at the center, with me as the king. Have you not seen this happen? It’s called the corner rebel. He rebels, he goes into a corner and sets up his shop there, and then he can attract a few people there and you know, the corner shop. From there came the word ‘corner’. In all these shops, don’t you find corner written, it’s because corner shops work a lot. Stationary corner, whatever.
Authentic rebellion can happen only when first of all you know two things: one, what are you rebelling against? And who is the one rebelling? We know neither of these, then what is this rebellion? It’s a sham. It’s not a rebellion against the society, it’s very much a social phenomenon, it is within the society.
The one who disparages society the most becomes socially popular. Does that happen or not? The angry young man used to say, “Two hoots to this world. Tumhari ye duniya, tumhi sambhalo ye duniya .” And then he finds that the world is carrying him on its shoulders. He looked like a world renouncer and suddenly he’s a favorite of the world.
‘My life, my rules’. Whose life? Whose rules? Even this phrase, ‘my life, my rules’ is not coming from your own life. Even this rule, that if it’s my life, it has to be my rules, even this rule is not your own. So, you are being ruled by someone else when you say ‘my rules’. Even in saying ‘my rules’, it is somebody else’s rules that you are following, no?
Did you coin this phrase, ‘my life, my rules’? You are still a slave. A slave by another name, a slave by another name. There are slaves who say, “My life, somebody else’s rules,” and there are slaves who say, “My life, my rules.” They are both equal slaves because neither of them has any originality.
Immature rebellion takes you nowhere. Those of you who are fond of rebelling must pay heed, rebel against yourself first. Before you rebel against others, rebel against yourself. The others are not so much outside, the others are all inside of you. Your very sense of self is founded on others. So, if you want to rebel against others, rebel simply against yourself.
The usual framework is, I versus the others; no, the real thing is that this ‘I’ is a function of others. The others do not stand outside of you, the others all are seated inside of you. If you want to rebel against others, rebel against yourself.
It’s not about my life my rules, it’s about asking, “Is my life mine at all?” What is life itself? How do I define life? Do I know what is ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘life’? What are these words? Just yesterday I said, “Fooled by familiarity.” We are so familiar with these words that we think that we know what they mean. But familiarity does not necessarily imply understanding.
You are familiar with the word life, education, money, career, love. We are very familiar, we use these words forty times a day; so, we are extremely familiarized. But we don’t know what they mean. Try to see that you do not know what they mean. I am not asking you to learn their real meaning. No! I am asking you to first of all, clearly, honestly, acknowledge that you do not know what is meant even by these basic words, the building blocks of existing itself.
Around fifteen years back when I used to actively teach, this was one of my favorite exercises. I would ask my students to write down the fifteen words they most commonly, most frequently use in their everyday conversations. And they would write down these words. Then I would say, “Now honestly check whether you know what these words mean.” And how horrible it is that it’s not unknown words we do not know of. It’s the very known words that we know nothing of.
If you do not know the unknown that’s all right, the unknown is the unknown, it’s not supposed to be already known. But what if something is being used, practiced fifty times a day and is still unknown, is that not horrible? Yeah, that’s our life.
But that can be very smoothly taken care of especially when you are young, especially when you have time. I wish when I was your age, somebody came to me in a meeting like this and addressed me this way. Yours is the stage when you are just opening up to life. This is when you should and you can be the most vigilant, the most outgoing, risk-taking, adventurous and honest, no?
They are constantly reminding me to not to come to the edge, it’s interfering with the recording or the audio it seems. I am being told to come here this is where you know the limelight is. You know why I am coming to this place? Typically, I don’t stand and talk, mostly it’s in a seating posture these days. But when it comes to interacting with students I prefer to stand. This is how it used to be for several years from 2006 till around 2011-12. I want to be close when it comes to students, that’s why I am standing right at the edge. They are telling me to retreat. Not only here, if this proceeds for long enough, I will jump over. Which actually used to happen, if you dig out the old videos, that’s what you’ll find there. Go there and then not only be here, there, there, there, into. Yeah, anyway.
