The story of Ekalavya is indeed fascinating. As the legend goes, Ekalavya, an ardent admirer of Dronacharya requests him to be his coach. Undeterred by Dronacharya’s rejection, Ekalavya molds a mud sculpture of Dronacharya and starts self-learning in front of the idol. His devotion and commitment, helps him become even better archer than Dronacharya’s own legendary student Arjuna.
Mythology gives us so many lessons to learn from and equal number of topics to debate :).
Welcome to the paradigm of practicing self-learning!
For most of us, our formal, structured form of learning gets over by early twenties. By then, we either start hating formal education or we just don’t see any further value in it. We want to get on with life and start making a living.
If our formal education is coming in handy for the job at hand, it’s a match made in heaven. But many of you would discover where you want to reach in life, but also realize that the vehicle you have learnt to drive so far, will not take you there.
… and then the question is how one would learn to drive a new vehicle….
Infact there are quite a few options. Getting back to formal education, targeted certifications, learning through books (and internet), getting real (human) coaches and the list goes on… :).
…and then there is this Ekalavya option…
… and it would naturally spark a debate… Why wouldn’t have Ekalavya gone to any other teacher? There might have many contemporaries of Dronacharya who would have happily taken Ekalavya as their pupil. How could Ekalavya learn the art so perfectly not having somebody to talk to?
Would he have peaked into the sessions from far or watched the recorded training videos 🙂 (oops, sorry, this is my corporate self, ignore this part)!
The legend has it that Ekalavya wanted to train from the best, and the best alone. He felt insulted for not getting admission but was equally determined to be counted at par with the Arjunas and Karnas. He had the passion for archery far greater than rest of the Pandavas or Kauravas. He perfected himself to the extent that the moment Dronacharya saw his skills, he was duty-bound to make him incapacitated by asking to chop his right thumb as his (virtual coaching) fees!
… and that’s the most powerful lesson. It’s not always that you get to be trained by the best. But that shouldn’t stop you from becoming the best!
Your own imagination of your best self, charting your own path to get there and passionate self-drive far outweighs any structured tools and techniques. Yes, you may want to use them, but not limited by them.
Happy to passionately debate :)…
#rkmusings #weekendvibes #corporatelife #visualisation #learninganddevelopment #alternatethinking
