“‘Fools alone say that work and philosophy are different, not the learned.’ The learned know that, though apparently different from each other, they at last lead to the same goal of human perfection.”
— Swami Vivekananda
Rajat Gupta was the first foreign-born Managing Director of McKinsey & Company. He was a board member of Fortune 500 companies and an advisor to renowned non-profits like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He was the classical immigrant success story… until he was sentenced to prison for insider trading.
There, Gupta found plenty of time to reflect. “Now that my worldly goods had been stripped away, some part of me felt that the enforced austerity of prison existence might offer an opportunity to return to my core values,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Was this a message from God telling me I needed to change my way of life? Had I been too driven, too busy, too focused on making a bigger impact?”
Had Gupta kept in touch with philosophy while climbing the corporate ladder, he could’ve avoided this fate. He would’ve known how much was enough and let values and ethics drive his decisions instead.
Philosophy is seen as the refuge of the lazy or retired; it has no place among ‘hustlers and go-getters.’ But philosophy literally means “love for wisdom,” or the love for knowing how to live well (and succeeding at it). After all, can you live well without wisdom?
Don’t study philosophy after you get tired of the busyness of life. Study it all the time – whether you’re a student or teacher, fresher or CEO.