Be An Island

If you are an engineer, can you become a doctor?

If you are a doctor, can you become a lawyer?

If you are a lawyer, can you become an artist?

The good news is you can. 

The bad news is society will not let you. Because they feel there is a significant cost attached to such a transition.

Cost that was incurred upon your school or college. (Even though you hardly learnt anything there). Cost of letting a lucrative option go. (Even though it might be hardly any lucrative.)

When Aakriti Goel (if the name rings a bell, go back to our previous newsletter), an engineer, decided to pursue medicine, she was initially denied by society (read, her family!).

She ran a thought experiment with her mother. If you and I were left on an island, would you still not let me be a doctor? You can imagine her mother’s response.

Unfortunately, we don’t live on an island. We live in an extremely connected world. And that transpires fear in us. In people around us. 

That fear is given the name of opportunity cost, and imposed upon you the moment you start thinking of changing tracks altogether.

What can you do? 

Disconnect from the noise around you. Noise creates confusion.

Be an island. Being one will make you confidently confused.

Signing Off,

Aarti & Ashutosh

PS. By the time we finished writing this newsletter, we found that ‘Be An Island’ is a book, with subtitle ‘The Buddhist Practice of Inner Peace’. It’s next on our reading list!