Hello friends,
How have you been? How has August been treating you and how excited are you for September?
Here are some things to ponder in the coming week.
A few days ago I was just scrolling through my phone when I came across some tweet about self-made success, hard work, and something on those lines. Soon I was jolted into deeper thoughts about success and how from the very first get-go in our lives we are told to work hard to reach that goal. We all believe in the ethos of hard work, we wake up every day, get grinding, do everything we are supposed to do, stay honest and inch by inch we move forward in life. And I think it’s a great principle, a get compass to guide our life, but are we too blinded by this concept of “working hard” that we have somehow lost sight of other forces that dictate our journey in life?
What about Destiny?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not whimsical so as to say “everything depends on fate” No, I am not saying that. Of course, there’s human agency and free will to make choices and decide our course of action in life. But I believe that there are some things that we can’t control, things that are random, things that are out of our reach. Take for example this pandemic, in December 2019, you must have had a completely different plan for 2020, but you had to let go of all that, steer yourself in the direction the world was taking, you partially lost agency to do what you wanted. And this is just an example of how uncertainty functions in our lives. Human beings despite the progress we have made are in many ways still pawns in the hands of nature (or God, depending on what you would want to believe)
And Covid-19 is a macro example. But even singularly we tread through uncertainty all our lives. Another thing that we often fail into account is how random this universe actually is. And how seemingly small and irrelevant details compound in our lives transforming our journeys in ways unimaginable. This is known as the Butterfly Effect, small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system.
You could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby … changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.
Fichte, The Vocation of Man (1800)
Pause for a moment. Think about an important person in your life and when did you meet them for the first time. Was it an outcome of the universe’s randomness or somehow small events came together in making this person so familiar and important to you? A great example can be your childhood friends, you would have never met them had your parents not enrolled you in the school they did. These friends who have perhaps known you all your life, would not have existed for you at all if only you were enrolled in XYZ school in place of ABC school.
And now take this example and apply this to success and where you are in life. Of course, the opportunities you have gotten are a result of your hard work but did your hard work play the sole role in your success? Or are there millions of things that came together just in the right moment to help you reach where you are today?
Lastly, I want to leave you by bringing to your attention The Accident of Birth. In a country like India, the social station of our lives dictates most of our lives, or at least how convenient and easy it is going to be. I think none of us will deny that class, caste, gender, race, region of birth are huge determinants of the struggles or the lack thereof in our life. We often fail to take into account the extent of our privilege to be born able-bodied in an upper/middle class and caste background is perhaps the biggest onus one could think of in our society. And it is something that wasn’t in our control and we still reap the benefits or carry the burden of the same.
I often talk about how I took a leap of faith and followed my passion, which I did, I worked very hard for it indeed but one cannot and should not eliminate the social cushioning I had to be able to do so. Merit and hard work should always be understood in relation to its socio-cultural setup, these are not absolute entities depending only on an individual.
It is important that we recognize the role of luck in our lives and get over our “winner” bias. The cognizance of luck will broaden our perspective and free our thinking from the polar “lazy vs hardworking” people.
Insisting that my success is my do, makes it hard to see myself in other people’s shoes.
Appreciating the role of luck in my life can prompt a certain humility “there but for the accident of birth or the grace of God or the mystery of fate go I.” This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now.
Michael sandel, The tyranny of merit.
What I was Reading this week?
How India can ensure a female-friendly future in the gig economy?
Why do Indians trust Amitabh Bachchan in a world divided by Taliban and TV anchors?
Thank you so much for reading till the end. Do let me know if you have any suggestions for things I should talk about ahead.
You can reach out to me directly on my Instagram @pawan_rochwani.
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