When in January 1995 at the age of 30 years I came back to India from the US, I was going through depression, which later was diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder Type II. That was one of the main reasons to come back from the US.
During my initial period of settling down in India at that time, my brother-in-law C. Laxma Reddy and elder sister C. Jyothi took me under their wing until I could make my way in the world.
One day, when I was still under their care, since things were not going that great with regard to making a decent living, I asked my brother-in-law why I was having such great difficulty in getting along in life, my depression notwithstanding. Maybe I was hinting to him that besides the depression, there seemed to be other causes that were preventing me from making headway.
He observed that it was because I did not have that much interest in making money and to top it I was not planning to get married. He was, of course, implying that those two springs for getting busy in life were missing in my life and hence I was not able to move forward smoothly.
At that time although I thought he was more or less right about my lack of motivation for earning much money and getting married, I did not think that was what was shackling me.
Fast forward to the present to a saner me, and I realize how perspicacious his observation was given how it maps into Artha (wealth) and Kama (desire) – two of the four Purusharthas, the other two being Dharma (righteousness) and Moksha (liberation).
Purusharthas are the legitimate ends that can be pursued by any human being. Now, Dharma is the first Purushartha because whatever be one’s ends, one is expected to not transgress into wrongdoing to obtain those ends. The next two – Artha and Kama – are almost a no-brainer because almost every human being wants wealth/money so that s/he can lead a comfortable and happy life by buying the necessities and luxuries of life and also marrying and raising a family.
The twist here is that since it is in the religious context that the Purusharthas are mentioned, it is being pointed out to those aiming for Moksha that the pursuit of Artha and Kama is not something to be only frowned upon and they have their place in life and can be pursued legitimately through dharmic means without too much hindrance on the path to moksha. Of course, the rare spiritual person is able to renounce Artha and Kama even early on in life so as to pursue only Moksha single-mindedly in an attempt to fast-track to it.
Now, going back to my brother-in-law’s observation about my not wanting to earn, he was not entirely correct. How else can one explain my planning and hard work to make a good career for myself, first by securing a seat in medicine (MBBS) and later going to US to pursue PhD in economics, which degree would have ensured me a decent job and living in the US. Of course, to be sure, what I was not aiming at was becoming very rich. I seemed to be aiming more or less for a middle-class/upper-middle-class lifestyle.
However even that middle-class lifestyle initially proved to be unattainable primarily because I did not follow my Svadharma, which would have taken me into the fields of philosophy, religion, English literature, psychology, mathematics, etc. Instead I ended up in medicine and economics due to wrong career choices based more on what had traction in the job market rather than on what interested me deeply as areas of study and inquiry. Hence, I paid the price.
Of course, I rectified that to some extent later on because once I returned from the US, I chose to work as a writer and editor, which areas of work were the sweet spot of the intersection of what I liked doing, what I was reasonably good at and what the world had a need for and paid reasonably well.
As far as Kama is concerned, I had always been attracted to the opposite sex in my youth but given my inherent longing for Moksha without really knowing back then what Moksha entailed actually, I had decided that sex was something to be avoided since it would form a barrier to attaining Moksha. That of course meant some amount of repression of the sexual urge in my youth, and of course I had already decided right from the time I was 15 years or so that I was never going to get married so that I could pursue the religious life in the quest for Moksha or Truth.
Although it is not entirely true that sex has to be given up altogether on the path to Moksha, there is a grain of truth to it because sexual act being highly pleasurable, once experienced it is difficult to practice moderation when it comes to sex and indulgence in it makes the mind so attracted to it the whole time that it becomes difficult to give proper attention to the pursuit of Moksha by withdrawing the mind from the world and its many attractions.
Now that I stand almost on the threshold of turning sixty, I perhaps would advise my younger self to ALWAYS pursue Svadharma be it career or conjugal bliss, and by all means renounce everything if that be your calling in life. At the same time, despite my many misses and false turns, life has not turned out badly because as I now turn sixty I can at least claim that I have achieved Moksha or liberation of sorts at the level of intellectual understanding and whatever be the hiatus thereof to complete liberation I am sure the remaining portion of life might yet be enough to bridge that gap.
Know Thyself 