The decorated highway of success or The naked sky of freedom? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)
Speaker: Aman has asked, ‘What should I choose, a life of correctness or a life of exploration?’ First of all we have to understand that why this question is arising in his mind. What is correctness? ‘Correctness’ as the word, as the notion exists in our mind, is probably about following a beaten path. If I have to go from here to somewhere then I already know this is the path that I ought to take. So many others have taken this path. This path has been recommended to me by teachers, friends, family. Whenever I look around I see people taking this path. So this must be the correct path. After all I just have to reach from here till there. Reaching is important. Why waste time in thinking too much about the path, especially when the path is so easily obvious? It is a proven path. Everybody has been taking this path. So why bothered to inquire about this or that, I already know. Take this road, walk, reach there’. This is what probably we mean by correctness. It is already correct. It is well know, in advance through others. Then there is exploration. What he means by exploration is, ‘As I stand here, not only do I have a definite notion, a fixed notion about the path that I want to take, I also have not asserted my mind where I want to reach.’
In the first situation, you just want to do the ‘correct’ things. There are many people who just want to do the correct things. In the lives of those people who are very fond of correctness, first of all the ends are fixed, where you want to reach; the target, the goal. The ends are fixed and also the paths, the means, they are also fixed. These are the people who worry a lot about correctness, who are afraid of being incorrect. Where does their correctness come from ?
Listeners(everyone): Others.
Speaker: Others have told them that is the place to go and this is the path to take. Then there is a second kind of people who are explorers. What happens with them? They stand with no fixed concept of where they ought to reach. Life is not work for them. Life is not a project for them. This is the project that we need to complete. This and this way and the way also needs to be correct. Life is just a game, a sports for them. So what would they do? They would go and find. They would look about. They would not say that anything is prohibited for them. ‘This is the highway that goes till that point, but who has prohibited me from looking right and left of that highway. Nobody has prohibited me. The highway is nice, very-very nice, everybody is travelling on the highway. There is nothing that prevents me from looking at the greenery around and may be there are small tracks that move on the side of the highway that lead to the beautiful places. I will explore, I will find out.’
