I am being told to work hard, but not for myself. I am being told to slog for something I don’t really care for. This is the situation of each one of us: no purpose and high pressure. The very system is designed to rob you of having any innate, heartfelt purpose of your own. Pressure alone is not the problem. The very nature of a great purpose is that it brings pressure, but such pressure now is life-saving, even life-giving, because you love what you want to achieve.
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Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. So my question is regarding the mental pressure which students are facing nowadays in colleges and other educational institutions, due to which they take harsh steps such as suicide, etc. You all know about it, and nowadays these things have become common even in top institutes like IITs. This year, in IIT Kharagpur itself, there have been five cases of suicide.
So, what are your thoughts on this, and how can we not go into that bubble where we are so pressurized? So when we take that step.
Acharya Prashant: See, if there is a purposeless life without pressure, one just hangs on and rolls on, right?
We are considering a 2×2 matrix: purpose and pressure. Now, no purpose and no pressure, you are a rolling stone. Cool. At most, life will be wasted. But you will live on. You will just live on like any insentient thing, right? Or like a tree or like an animal. No purpose, but at the same time no pressure of any kind to achieve, to demonstrate, to change, nothing. I am a particular way, and the way I am is very insufficient, very suboptimal, but at the same time I do not experience any pressure, external or internal, to change or improve or accomplish or whatever. So I can just continue merrily living, right? The only small disadvantage would be a wasted life. That would be the only outcome.
