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Rohini is the founder of R V Learning Foundation, a social impact organization which advises women led business on brand building, marketing strategy and content development. It also works with organizations for creating inclusive workplaces and for building employability skills in the youth. The organization supports the education of underprivileged students. LESS ... MORE

“It is not given to man to know his needs” , says Leo Tolstoy in his short story,  “What men live by”. An angel, was sent to earth by god to serve a punishment and he was asked to find answer to the question, “What is not given to man?”

 The angel lived as a shoe maker. A rich and arrogant man came to  him once with expensive leather and asked him very authoritatively, to make a pair of nice shoes. Instead, the angel made slippers for him. The shoemaker’s master became anxious because his employee, the angel had wasted expensive leather. He feared that the rich man would express his intense anger at him. Shortly, the rich man’s wife came running and asked to make slippers instead of shoes because her husband had died. The dead were supposed to wear slippers. The angel smiled because he had found the answer, “It is not given to man to know his needs.” 

In Mahabharata, Krishna asked Duryodhana and his cousin Arjuna to choose between him and his mighty army, the Narayani sena. Arjuna quickly, without much thought chose Krishna over the Narayani Sena and Duryodhana secretly laughed at the naiveness of Arjuna. Mahabharata was a war fought between Kauravas and Pandavas. Duryodhana and  his brothers were the Kauravas and Arjuna and his brothers were Pandavas. We know how Mahabharata ended. Arjuna’s decision served him well.

Why did Arjuna after all choose Krishna when he could have chosen his mighty army to fight in the war? Duryodhana had lived a comfortable life ever since he was born. Since childhood he had nurtured the dream of becoming the king and ruling Hastinapur. Arjuna on the contrary was born along with his other brothers in a forest. Due to a curse by a sage , his father Pandu had to leave all the royal comforts only to live in the woods. Unfortunately,  Pandu died before he could return to his kingdom. By then his sons, the five Pandavas were born who came back to Hastinapur after losing their father. Duryodhana, conspired to burn alive, the Pandavas and their mother  Kunti, but they escaped only to hide once again in the forest  for many years . Again, they served the forest term as a punishment after Duryodhana tricked them into losing a game of dice with him.

In spite of being the royals, Pandavas led a life of hardships whereas Duryodhana and his brothers enjoyed the princely comforts. Arjuna had known that in spite of being so close to power and royal luxuries, life  was capable of driving humans in unpredictable directions.  Duryodhana on the contrary was quite conceited and sure that he would live life on his terms. Arjuna had seen the supreme being in Krishna and he had also exhausted all options so he chose him over everything else.

Choices we make determine our destiny and yet human choices can never guarantee a specific outcome.  Entrepreneurs are daring as they choose to defy the safety net and venture into unknown. The one thing that they hold on to for support is their intuition which they trust to their core. Yet they face the same question at every step, as in Tolstoy’s story “ Do I know what I need?” 

When someone asked Newton how he discovered gravity, he replied, “ by thinking and thinking, those who think believe in god and those who don’t think don’t believe.”

There is no picture-perfect plan. I remember having walked on the freshly fallen snow as a kid. As I stepped into the snow, my feet would go down into it and get stuck, That moment would make me feel as if I would be caught there forever. But with each step I would dig into the snow and disperse it  to make way for my subsequent step. In the end I would reach my destination but the feeling of uncertainty would keep lurking  till I had made it to the end.

The toil & sweat of entrepreneurs is an obvious path to reaching the desired end. Arjuna could make the right choice because he had gone through the toil , contrary to Duryodhana. Documented knowledge is good to have for a broader perspective but every entrepreneur’s struggle is unique and each one has to find their unique answers, by just working and working on it till the unexpected solutions unfold.

Karma is the key. “Work without worrying about the outcome,” as stated in Bhagavad-Gita, makes absolute sense . When you don’t know the outcome, why worry about it. Indeed, an entrepreneur’s ultimate desired outcome is to make a product which customers long for. Reaching this goal requires them to meet multiple smaller goals which are like mirage. You reach them and they disappear throwing a new challenge. Walking through the snow , digging my way for each step was no different from this. 

Negotiating one’s way through the network of the multiple goals, perseverantly , while being flexible and open to shifting the gears for a trip to an unplanned road, if required, without worrying about the outcome, only to perfect the path leading to the goal, is the Karma theory. When you have perfected the path, reaching the goal is inevitable. 

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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