Because we do, I think sometimes feel like we have to kill a part of ourselves in order to live in the world that we somehow justify the fragmentation that our choices create within ourselves and say, OK, well, I'm only going to live this half life.

I'm OK with living a life where I'm not fully integrated into who I am.

I would be the recipient of incredible news coverage and awards and lifetime achievement things and honorary doctorates and every single time these things came, I felt like more of a fraud

because I felt like what was being congratulated was the veneer, the performance, the shinier I made myself, the more love I could attract to myself in the world I would finally be lovable.

And yet here were folks in Skid Row who were saying, dude, you're OK, you're OK, we're all fucked up, we're all here, right? Just be here, be here, be fully here. What would it be like to be fully here?

So how often have you changed maybe your decisions or done something you didn't feel entirely called to do because you just felt the weight of other people's expectations.

Maybe it was overt expressed, maybe they made the point of view or maybe even their demands of you known or maybe you just felt it more as an undercurrent.

And yet you let it control not only your decisions, but also your actions and at times, even your possibilities and path in the world.

We have all been there and sometimes that very dynamic becomes even more complicated by our own inner chatter.

Fueled by a deep and real tension between maybe two paths that we found ourselves drawn to or maybe away from, making it nearly impossible to figure out which to travel down and which to abandon.

What to say yes to and what to say no to.

Well, this was the experience of my guest today, world renowned violinist, activist, 2018 MacArthur Fellow and founder and artistic director of Street Symphony V. J. Gupta.

A violin prodigy who performed with the Israeli Phil under Zubin Mehta before the age of 10 and landed a spot in the iconic LA Philharmonic at the age of 19,

V. J. faced a choice early in life between the artistic fire of music that burned within him and a dual passion for science and medicine, which was also the more expected and accepted conventional path by his parents who were first generation immigrants.

As he began to deepen into the more acceptable adult path of medicine and as he described for the first time in his life, feel his fingers begin to lose the ability to play music.

A chance encounter with someone who would become a bit of a momentary mentor would change everything, setting him back on a path of music where he would build a luminous career for over a decade rising to the top of the field.

But it was yet another chance moment.

One that found him face to face with the unhoused community in LA's Skid Row that would lead to yet another radical turn.

Abandoning one of the most plumb jobs in music and years of building a reputation and career to not only be of service to a community, but to also reclaim a part of himself that he left behind without even realizing it.

And to find a place of not only self-acceptance, but also of solace, fellowship and community in a place he never realized he belonged.

So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

In spending a bit of time sort of like exploring not just what you're doing now, but where you've come from.

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