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(Applause)

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Joseph Campbell once said,

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"Everything begins with a story"

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So I thought I would start by telling you the story of my life.

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I was born, one month early

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in the midst of a terrible winter snow storm

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in Toronta, Canada, in November of 1969.

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My mother was all alone that night.

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She had just made her way from India to Toronto

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and my father still hadn't made it over there.

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And I still think about

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what it must have been like for her that night

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all alone in this far off country

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with this new baby in her arms.

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Maybe she was staring outside the window

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and looking at snow flakes whirling around

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for the very first time in her life.

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Unbeknownst to her, the low visibility of that night

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and the absence of my father

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would prove important of things to come.

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So that is one story of my life.

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Now let me tell you another story of my life.

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Its a 'Jack in the box' world.

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You open it up carefully,

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one parcel at a time.

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But sometimes, things just spring up and out.

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So I did, sprang out one month early

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and my father wasn't even there to receive me.

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My mother, who had never intended to leave India,

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suddenly found that she was married

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and shipped off to Toronto,

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and from Toronto to New York,

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and then from there to New Jersey.

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My parents, who were Sikhs,

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lived among the Sikhs wherever they went.

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So I lived within a country, in a country

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and they had every intention

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to raise me as a good Sikh child.

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I was gonna grow up and come back to India

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and a whole bunch of Sikh men were gonna line up

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and they were gonna choose the right Sikh husband.

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So when i was a kid,

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at one point my parents started to wonder

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why they had to constantly shout "Watch Out!".

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Surely even a a klutz would notice a parking meter on occasion.

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Well, the mystery was solved by a vision specialist

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at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

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who told my parents that I had been born

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with a rare form of retinitis pigmentosa

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and would be blind before I finish school.

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When I was 13, my father woke up one morning

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complaining of a leg pain.

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My mother told him to go to the doctor

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and even set up an appointment for him.

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He never went to see the doctor.

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Eventually, he was found collapsed outside a bar,

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and by the time he made it to the hospital,

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he had already suffered three heart attacks and was no more.

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This is not to say

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that our lives are made up of solely unpleasant and random events.

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How well can any of us plan for our future

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if we can only see so far?

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How well can you direct your future

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if the weather changes faster than you can say "Surprise!"

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But wait, I have another story for you.

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My parents left India.

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They chose to leave India.

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They chose to go to Canada.

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They chose to go to the United States.

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And they chose this because they were in pursuit of a better life

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for themselves, for their children.

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Like my father would always talk about

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how he landed up in the United States with exactly one dollar in his pocket,

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but he had a lot of dreams.

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I was born into that dream

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and I grew up with that dream.

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And you might say that I understood that what shines so bright in that dream

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that you could see it even if you were blind like me, was choice.

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Anyone of you could tell the story of your life

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in terms of fate, chance or choice.

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Its worth doing the mental exercise sometimes.

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"What are the circumstances of your birth that affected where you are today?"

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"what were those random events that happened to happen one day

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that affected who you are and where you got to?"

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"What were the choices that you made?"

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No matter how you tell the story of your life

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you will discover some interesting truths about yourself.

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But I think that there is something very special

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when you tell the story of your life in terms of choice.

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Choice in the end is the only one of these forces

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that puts control in your hands.

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Its the only thing that enables you to go from who you are today

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to who you want to be tomorrow.

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So its the most powerful tool we have for shaping ourselves, our lives, our futures.

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And ultimately, regardless of what fate or chance may have in store for us,

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we are evaluated by the choices that we make.

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"Ok, but for God's sake, how do I make choices?"

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Its is a particularly perplexing question to an Indian-American.

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They have a name for us you know.

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They call us ABCD - American Born Confused Desi.

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As an Indian-American. its not just that you learn two different languages.

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Sure, as a Sikh girl with a heritage from Delhi,

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I learned some mix of Hindi and Punjabi, much like what they speak in the Hindi movie, versus English.

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But its not just that you learn two different languages,

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[instead] you learn two different ways of life,

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two different ways of thinking

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two different ways of choosing.

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I understood growing up that as a Sikh child

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you had to be a good Sikh child, listen to what your parents said

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respect your elders, respect the wishes of God

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Sure, career choices were very much decided by your parents.

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Doctor/Engineers [is] obviously good.

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And your marriage choice was, of course, influenced heavily by your parents.

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Choice was something that had consequences.

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And, so when you made a choice, you made it carefully,

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because, ultimately, choice had its limitations.

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That's what I learned from my Sikh culture.

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Well, what about the American point of view?

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You get to choose,

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you get to decide who your are, what you want,

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what you will be when you grow up, what your will wear,

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what you will eat, what you will do with your hair,

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what kind of career you will pursue, whom you will marry,

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how you will marry, what sort of a life you will lead.

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Choice was all about possibilities.

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So here I am, an Indian American and I've got to make

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some pretty big choices in my life.

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Who's gonna decide my career?

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Who's gonna decide my marriage?

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How is this gonna be decided?

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By the dictates of Indian culture?

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By the dictates of American culture.

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As a blind person, everyone is always asking,

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"What will become of her when she grows up?"

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That was asked by both Americans and Indians.

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At least they were in consensus on that one.

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(Laughter)

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So in school, I remember our teachers used to say,

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"You can grow up and do whatever it is you want to be

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as long as you put your mind and heart to it.

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One day my teacher said and asked all of us in class,

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"What do you guys wanna be when you grow up?"

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Well, I very confidently raised my hand and said,

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"I wanna be a pilot."

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(Laughter)

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That was exactly everybody's reaction.

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The poor teacher was so speechless she said,

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"Oh, that's interesting child."

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(Laughter)

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But I wasn't very good at that.

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So, then they decided that I could go to college.

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At which point, the choice of what I was gonna be when I grew up

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was so obvious, it just wasn't obvious to me.

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I was gonna become a lawyer!

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Because justice was blind.

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(Laughter)

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So, everywhere I went, people just gave me roles to play

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trying to stick me in a niche

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and it became imperative for me to learn how to separate

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my true limitations from my perceived ones.

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I started to develop this keen awareness at some point,

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when I was growing up,

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that so many of our hopes, dreams and expectations

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struggle constantly against our limitations.

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One of the big challenges that we all have in our lives

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is in figuring out how to overcome those challenges.

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Which ones can we overcome and which ones we can't.

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I guess, I wanna convince you today

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that I was blessed.

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What I learned from my Indian heritage was that

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the question that you ask is not 'What do you want?'

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The question that you ask is 'What can you be good at?'

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'What can you be excellent at?'

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Pursue it with great discipline.

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That is the life of someone who has integrity.

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What I learned from the American culture

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was that you don't have to settle for those

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meager options put before you

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People can say no to you, and they will.

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People can take choices away from you, and they will.

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But you can create choices for yourself.

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Choices that those other people may not have even imagined.

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I didn't have all the choices that the sighted have

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but in a way that was easier.

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Any time I wanted to pursure a choice,

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it had to be something that I was willing to dedicate myself to

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And, because I had to push past doorkeepers and nay-sayers, I could never afford to choose on a whim.

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And that meant that you had to be choosy about choosing.

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So now let's take up these three criteria:

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The Indian View.

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The American View.

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The Blindness View.

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How am I gonna choose?

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What am I gonna choose?

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Well, it was obvious wasn't it?

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You choose the thing that you've been thinking about your whole life,

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The thing that you have thought about in ways that other people haven't thought about,

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the thing with which you can contribute something new to

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it became the most natural choice in the world to study

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Choice.

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So, that's what I've been studying for the past 20 years.

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People ask me,

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"Why did you title your book: The Art of Choosing? What is the art of choosing anyway?"

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It's a great question.

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And I think, the answer to the question,

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you above all else will understand what I mean when I say it.

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Indians taught me the value of choice and it's limitations,

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and I have studied that in many ways in my research.

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Americans taught me the value of choice in terms of the

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possibilities that it all offers.

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You might say that these are antithetical to one another

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But they're not.

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They are two sides of the same coin.

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It is when we are able to balance our hopes,

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our dreams and appreciation for the possibilities

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with a clear-eyed assessment of the limitations,

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that we are best prepared to practice

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The Art of Choosing.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)