Education and Pirated DVDs

I recently finished reading a book called,

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid.

It’s about the journey of a boy, named “the protagonist” or “you,” from his childhood to his deathbed. He was raised in a village by his mother and father, both of whom died relatively early on in his life. This caused him to pursue entrepreneurship and built his own successful bottled water business.

At some point in his life, he met a woman simply named “the pretty girl.” When they first met each other, the pretty girl asked the protagonist if he knew anything about movies.

Wanting to impress the pretty girl, he stretched the truth and told her he knew everything about movies.

Working as a delivery boy in a shop where pirated DVDs are made, he gave the pretty girl whatever movie she wanted to watch.

And so this begins their lifelong on-and-off friendship.

Now one of the chapters in the book is called, “Get an Education.” In that chapter, there’s a quote that I’ll paraphrase here. Getting an education is essential to becoming filthy rich.

A true statement indeed.

What’s more interesting is that the DVDs symbolizes a form of education.

How?

For the protagonist, he’s able to learn the different lifestyles outside of his own and see what’s possible. He’s able to connect more with the pretty girl as well.

It’s amazing how sometimes you can learn the most valuable lessons from the most unexpected resources.

The most recent example was the one I gave in yesterday’s email about Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof movie.

A more personal example, I learned a lot of personal development lessons from playing competitive videogames during my younger years.

There are many other resources too. It’s just a matter of keeping an open mind and thinking differently.