At 28, having managed our household after losing my father, I am pivoting from engineering to an MBA to build a career around people.
However, staying at home leaves me feeling stagnant, left behind by the world, and overwhelmed by career decisions.
How do I overcome the anxiety of starting late, and how do I balance taking active responsibility with surrendering to destiny?
I know everything happens for a reason, but sometimes I don’t understand when I should do my duties and when to leave it to the destiny or to the Mother.
The sense of good and bad is given to man by our nature. Animals don’t have it nor do the gods act based on our human ideas of good and bad. As for the Divine, He uses everything, including our good and bad, to bring us closer and closer to Him which alone ultimately matters. Was Meerabai a good daughter or an ideal wife? But the Divine took her into His arms. Was Ratnakar, the dacoit, or Angulimal, the murderer, or Augustine, the profligate, good by human standards? But all of them were uplifted by the Divine Grace and turned into seers and sages.
Besides, the idea of good and bad itself evolves and changes with the social milieu. Its usefulness is that it keeps the Society together and keeps excesses under check by erecting certain standards of conduct. This is needed for the infant soul to prevent getting into serious problems. But as the soul grows into adulthood then the idea of good and bad also changes from social to personal, from external to something more intrinsic.
Ravana and Hiranyakashipu were killed not because they were morally bad but because they were extremely self-centered and their presence was becoming a menace and threat to other forms and ways of life. In fact, selfishness is the only evil and cruelty the only sin, yet it is so universal in various forms that even this is permitted by Providence as a stage of evolution.
One must do some useful, productive work, any work which is in tune with our nature. It is our contribution towards the collective growth of mankind. Money is a secondary thing but through work we contribute to the society at large in some way or the other. Bringing up children well with high values, creating a happy, harmonious atmosphere at home is also work, and a very important one since it ultimately goes into nation-building and human progress when the children grow up. Jijabai, mother of the great Shiva ji, Kaushalya, the mother of Lord Rama did an admirable work with their children, whose impact was tremendous. On the other hand, Kaikashi created a Ravana, who was a menace to the world. Motherhood itself is a very special work. Of course, one should take up the work that flows naturally from within. Doing courses or joining a company may be needed to take care of one’s life and its necessities. But true work, the work we are meant to do and engage with is the work towards which our nature itself points out in terms of temperament and innate interests.
And old at 28! Please never let these thoughts come. One can be young at 82. It is a question of which direction one is looking at. If one is turned towards the past, then one has grown old. But if our eyes are turned towards the future as they must, in terms of the progress to be made, the works to do, the things to learn, then one is young, forever young.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
