THE ROAD LESS TAKEN

 

“Seize every opportunity along the way;

 for, how sad it would be

if the road you chose became the road not taken.”

Robert Breault

 

The book that inspired me the most –  I have told this countless number of times – was ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. I found a used copy of this book on the footpath near Churchgate area when I had just come to Bombay (now Mumbai) and was jobless. But, I was dreaming… I earnestly wanted to know how people succeeded. I hadn’t read any motivational books before I read ‘Think and Grow Rich’, nor I had attended any motivational Workshops, leave alone watching today’s YouTube videos! So, when, on the cover of this book, I read ‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve’… Yes, it came to me as the Manna from heaven… I wanted to hear it… I wanted to reinforce in me, that what I dreamt in my heart, I could achieve… and there was a way to do it!

After more than eight decades since ‘Think and Grow Rich’  was first published, the book has resurfaced now in the form of a movie… So timeless has been its message: ‘You can, actually, ‘think and grow ‘rich’!

However, it’s interesting to hear Napoleon Hill telling us in his another classic – ‘Law of Success’ – that his road to success had been a bumpy one… He keeps describing, with dramatic effect, as to how often, he had nosedived to the brink of bankruptcy, and how gravely his nearest and dearest ones were concerned about his career and financial health… For a significant portion of his life, he had to struggle financially, he keeps us reminding in ‘Law of Success’…

Hence come the questions: Was that long, bumpy and uncertain journey worth it? Couldn’t he take up a ‘secured job’ in life and remain hassle-free? How can you preach about being ‘Rich’ when you yourself had to remain in ‘poverty’ for years on?

Yes Sir, the questions come to all of us, who are eternally searing for that ‘elusive path’ to realize our dreams, to achieve our goals, including financial ones: Should we take up a secured job in life and keep at bay all the uncertainties of a self-employed life? Etc.

I am sure, every self-employed person in this world has been haunted by this question…

When our chips are down – most of the times they are – we do wonder, if beating a trodden path was better than beating an untrodden one! From this concern, we, often, find ourselves discouraging our own children from beating an untrodden path…

It took some years for me to figure out what Napoleon Hill meant by the term ‘Rich’…

If money and wealth are the measures of being ‘rich’ – like the author, I, too, have been miles away from this yardstick. Like him, I, too, had to ‘stay hungry and stay foolish’, for almost 63 years, just to look back and say what Robert Frost had said in his inspiring poem - ‘The Road Not Taken’:

Both, Dilip Kumar and Mithun Chakraborty, early in their lives, chose to be actors. Probably, they, too, had to choose between the two paths before them – the one trodden more or the one trodden less. Dilip Kumar, who lived almost close to a century, acted in only 65 films or so, while Mithun in 356 (including 253 in a leading role)… Was it not a choice, too?

What’s a wise decision and what’s a foolish decision – I am nobody to talk on this subject. But, this much I am able to say for sure: we all have to make our respective choices when it comes to achieving ‘what is closest to our hearts’… learn amply along our paths, and leave no regrets behind…

 

GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s: 1. www.istockphoto.com  

Videos: 1. QuestioVerum2010 2. Yanni