Book Review: Paul Millerd's Pathless Path
What is your relationship with work? Who are you when you are not working?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slow-reading Paul Millerd’s book, Pathless Path. Even though kindle estimates that I should be done with the book by 2.5 hours, it’s almost impossible to breeze through the book in one shot without pausing and reflecting on what each of the reflections means to me in my life context.
It’s a profound, radioactive book that will make you re-examine the choices you have made in your relationship with work and life. I chatted with him earlier this week and dialogued about the book. It was a moving conversation about the similarities of lives lived across Mylapore and Connecticut, the struggles involved in quitting full-time jobs and choice-making frameworks that stem from inherited life scripts that he calls “Default Path”, and the opportunities that present themselves when we move from default paths and embrace the “pathless path”.
What has been my relationship with work? And why am I talking about this book in this blog about discovering indic wisdom? Let’s dive in.
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What has been my relationship with work? How does my dharma and artha play out in my relationship with work?
In order to explore these questions, I will have to tell you my life story.
There was a time in my life when the only thing that mattered to me the most was a double promotion. I was probably in fifth or sixth grade. Nine or ten years old, I guess. I wasn’t content securing the top rank in a farcical joke called examination to assess my “academic performance”. I wasn’t content spending the best part of my childhood with didactic books that bored me to death and extra-curricular classes that gobbled up my social life. I wanted more.
I was naive enough to believe a myth floating around that my school gave exclusive double promotion for its crème de la crème. I wanted to be that special creamy one at the top. I had my own reasons to obsess over it. As the cards of my life had played out, my parents were much older than most of my friends’ parents and I wanted to race up the ladder to jobs and good life faster than anyone else.
If you've grown up in India, you would exactly know what I am talking about.
Early on, you are taught the Industrial Age's Divine Gospel for success.
"Study Well -->Get Good Grades -> Get Good Jobs -->Live Your Good Life".
Industrial Age flourished all over the world because the economic machine was built on the basis of high capital investment. In personal life, it meant that education was the best upfront capital investment you could make for your life.
No wonder there was pressure to make sure that you got that capital right.
You made sure you got your
a) Tenth grades right
b) Twelfth grades right (as the case in India)
c) Engineering GPA right
d) MBA GPA right.
The trouble with upfront capital investment is that you are never going to invest in that capital again anymore.
You tacitly agree to play the gospel as a karmic payback duty for your parents' lifetime of sweat and hard work. Your career choices get appropriated from your Ivy League cousins.
Seeing my successful cousin, growing up I wanted to copy-paste his life script. I wanted to study in India’s premier Ivy League management institution and realized that an engineering degree in a premier institution would go well with an MBA and went on to study mechanical engineering, keeping my final destination in mind.
I was the kid who inquired with my college seniors about CAT coaching centers on the first day of landing at my engineering college. Today, when I look back,I am amazed to discover that stranger who chose mechanical engineering even though he never had the basic ability to relate with machines.
When you play by the default path, everyone, except you, gets to decide all the important choices of your life. Starting from your LIC Insurance Plan Premium to your promotion cycle to your portfolio of religious after-life insurance plans. Of course, you do get to choose things like, you know, the clothes you wear.
(Illustration Credits: Grace Witherell from Breaking Smart)
It’s easy to blame my parents for convincing me to go down the default path. I was born in a half-colonized country, unlike other fully colonized countries which only had settler populations. And when you are born in a half-colonized country, I had to carry comfortable parts of my national identity that I held in pride (the parts of culture, spirituality, tradition, arts) and uncomfortable parts of my colonial identity that I held in shame. (the parts of economic muscle, science, technology, development)
Born to parents who faced the direct impacts of colonization, my parents valued work over family and everything else, as it was their generation who had to work hard and come out of economic poverty unleashed by the forces of colonization and bring food to the table.
Their generation carried two split parts of identity. One was the protestant working self which held work as divine. The other was the religious self which uses the moorings of culture, tradition to work continuously on inner transformation.
But what about this generation? Do I still have to prioritize work over family and everything else? What would it take to bring together these two split parts?
Ever since I quit my full-time job and became an independent free agent, my seeking energies have been directed towards discovering an integrated self that held a harmonious relationship with work and life.
It was that seeking which brought me on a journey to discover dharma.
This is of course easier said than done, and it’s an ongoing process. I carry both the “Pathless path Venky ” and “Default Path Venky” inside myself. The latter is one who walks around with a manager in his head, even though he has quit a full-time job. This manager is more often the Judge of Bhishma propensity who reminds him to work when he is relaxing. This manager inside his head makes him anxious when he explores interests that are outside the money-making and wealth creation artha realm.
When I am anchored in Yoga, it becomes easier to watch the whole psychodrama and accept that I will work on my practice and slowly strengthen the friend inside me to energize the “pathless path venky”.
Have you observed your “pathless path” self and your “default path”self you’ve inherited from your parents? In what ways do they determine the choices you make in the realm of dharma and artha? I would love to hear from you.