Acharya Prashant responds to a student's question about whether it is okay to have fun while focusing on a career. He begins by challenging the notion that fun and work are mutually exclusive, calling it a "very toxic concept" that people are filled with from a young age. If fun and work are considered separate, then work can never be fun. This condemns a person to a "loveless kind of work" for many hours a day, leading to frustration, strife, and conflict. He advises choosing your work so that you don't have to look for fun elsewhere; the work itself must be fun. This is unlikely if the work is chosen simply to follow the crowd. He then redefines the concept of fun. True fun, he explains, does not lie in ingratiating yourself but in standing bravely in front of challenges. It is the only fun possible in life. Fun is discovering you are more powerful than you thought, like a caterpillar deciding to become a butterfly. This is an adventure and a thrill. He contrasts this with cheap, "animalistic" fun like pranking others. Fun is about choosing work that challenges your weaknesses and helps you stretch yourself. It is about moving into the unknown and giving a genuine try to something you thought was impossible, and then seeing it materialize. This "high-end fun" is what the wise have called joy or "Ananda." A career, he states, is about fighting an impossible battle, not merely earning a living, a bike, a car, or a bigger house. He quotes John A. Shedd, "A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for," emphasizing that life is not meant for safety. One must learn to live in danger, acknowledging it without being threatened. A true career is to live for something you can die for. He distinguishes between livelihood, which is laboring just to feed your life, and work, which is joy. He concludes by recounting a story of an ascetic who, when stabbed to death, roars with laughter and utters "Tat Tvam Asi" (That you are), signifying that if one can die laughing, their life must have been full of tremendous joy.