Doing my diligence, I stare at the wall in front of me. Covered in graffiti, an expressive art form that intrigues me, a sloppily written, undecorated phrase stands out.
“Be yourself and do what you love, because those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.”
–Anonymous customer in happy donuts restroom
Eighteen years in and I feel like I’ve really lived my life thus far. I have two wonderful parents to thank for that. A casual glance at our family’s profile and our home life seems to be no different from that of the stereotypical first generation Indian’s–a doctor and a software engineer married with two children who’ve had a fair amount of academic success.
Fortunately, when it came to parenting, my parents weren’t stereotypical.
They’re the reason for my success and happiness–without their support, I’d always have made very well-advised, “practical” decisions (Indian parents are generally very risk averse). And, looking back, the empirical evidence didn’t always point me in the right direction–in fact, when it mattered most, the skew path ended up being better than the expected outcome of the outright traditional. Sure, the bread crumbs always lead you somewhere safe, but to find a treasure you might have to run into the wild, take Indiana Jones’ lead and you’re running from a tumbling boulder.
a wall clock, aka a “successful” person
Society has this manifestation of what it takes to be a successful person and what a successful person is like. I feel like most of society’s “successful” people are very similar to wall clocks. Sure, they can come in many interesting varieties, but two things hold true no matter the flavor: they reliably do what they’re expected to do; and there’s no way to tell when exactly they’ll die, but they eventually will, only to be replaced by another just like them.
If that’s what it takes to be successful, I’d rather be unsuccessful.
And shortly after realizing all of this, I saw the above video, and I quickly realized that you can lead a mule to water but you can’t make him drink, but if a mule is really, really thirsty, given the opportunity, he’ll find his own way to the water and he’ll drink it all up.
This kid basically has nothing. He has no proper education, and he has definitely not followed the beaten trail to success. Yet, he has somehow pulled success out from within. He was a really thirsty mule and he found his way to water and drank like no other.
I see now that everyone can attain some level of success; it just might not be through the traditional path–in fact it probably won’t be. For every successful person around you, how many unsuccessful do you see? I see a lot of people not doing what they love, struggling, and this is in America, the land of opportunity. I think the problem is the way through which people try to go about being successful isn’t fit for everyone; what’s a Julliard musician doing trying to struggle his way through medical school? I look back on the biggest success of my life thus far (however minor in the grand scheme of things) and I see that my paths were hardly traditional–normally a student doesn’t apply to college during their junior year; in fact, an MIT admissions officer advised me against it:
hi shrig –
don’t have a lot of time to answer, but briefly – you may be better off waiting a year.
that said, if you really want to apply this year, just make sure you document and describe your situation, and see what happens.
I was really thirsty, I really wanted to apply, and my parents let me smooth talk them into giving me their approval on a decision that was a bit to risky for the likes of most parents. (Of course, I didn’t show them this message…)
And it worked out for me. And I somehow knew it would.
I think people can assess risk and opportunity for themselves better than anyone else, and that’s why the beaten and tried paths that have become routine aren’t always the ways to go. After all, you’re the only one who knows when you’re thirsty.
The Great Startup 
Posted on November 18, 2012
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