May your ambitions be defeated

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Sir, in the beginning, you said that when we have plans for the future, we get stressed. Don’t you think that in life one should have at least one ambition to follow so that at any time in the future if one is going on the wrong path or out of the way, then one has that ambition in his subconscious mind to keep one on that way only, the way that one needs to follow to get that ambition?

Acharya Prashant (AP): We all have ambitions. An ambition is a plan for the future, a desire for the future. Right? What was your ambition when you were four years old? What did you want to become when you were four years old?

Listener 1 (L1): I wanted to become a detective.

AP: Detective. A Sherlock Holmes or a Karamchand.

(Addressing one of the listeners sitting in the audience)Yes, what did you want to become?

L2: I wanted to become a doctor.

L3: I wanted to grow older.

AP: Grow older because old people have power, and these kids are always bullied by the old people so let me become old quickly. Yes, what else you want to become when you were three, five years old?

L4: Pilot.

L5: Teacher.

AP: Sherlock Holmes, Jackie Chan, teacher, pilot, detective.

L6: Sir, we were very much fickle-minded at that time.

AP: How do you know that you are not fickle-minded right now? Today you are laughing at those three-year-olds because of his ambitions, but he was very much serious about his ambition. I wanted to become a superman. He was so fascinating.

L4: Sir, now also that fickle-mindedness comes.

AP: Today you are laughing. Why are you laughing? I was very serious. My ambitions. I must live my life according to my ambitions. Why are you laughing? And why must then I not laugh at your ambitions? You at eighteen years of age are laughing at those four-year-olds, me at thirty-five years of age, why should I not laugh at you, the eighteen-year-old? And somebody who is fifty, why should he not laugh at a thirty-five-year-old? Because these are fickle…