“The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. Instead, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use is polishing up the outside when there is no inside?”
— Swami Vivekananda
Truth. Justice. Kindness. Virtue.
Education builds these traits in us. Sadly, we ignore them and chase extrinsic aspects like grades, jobs, money, power, and people’s opinions of us. (It only gets worse as we grow older.)
What will such a life achieve? Will it train you to keep your head during a challenge? Will it enable you to think originally, to seek out your own experiences and discover your unique strengths?
Or will you break at the first touch of life’s hammer and chisel, the very things that will actually shape you?
A better way is to live what investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett calls an Inner Scorecard, one where values, ethics, self-respect, morals, and character guide your thoughts and actions more than money, fame, and beauty. (The Vedas call this dharma, the order and custom that make life and the cosmos possible.)
Each day, ask yourself: Do my actions comply with others’ expectations or with dharma? Am I living by an inner scorecard or an outer one?
Life is not an airplane that flies on autopilot. If others feed in the coordinates for your destination, you will end up in a place you don’t like with things you don’t want and people whom you despise. Rather, life is like navigating a rugged terrain, for which you have to keep calling on your skills, awareness, and self-belief.
When you keep course-correcting to stay on the right track, you can call yourself educated.