People, my dear friends, are essential of two types. Like they say in old cliched movies, people who think by their heart and people who go with their brains.

How often do we hear – follow your heart, do the right thing, enjoy the process etc. There are some people who actually take it to their hearts and keep walking the “uncharted territory”. We call them artists.

And mind you- my definition of an artist here is not limited to painters, musicians or stage performers. Instead, it includes all those, who have, somewhere ignored the profit and loss algorithm of life and pursued what they really liked. It can be a sportsman, a tech geek, a copywriter, a star salesman, a social activist or any professional who had an inclination towards an activity/cause and at some time made a conscious choice to follow his/her heart.

All these people, while they were growing up, faced doubts and had inhibitions like everyone else. But these people let their love triumph over their fears.

They floated with the wind and tasted the ice. Sometimes they fell too, but they shrugged off the reasons and made the same choice.

Let’s meet the other kind- the managers. These guys are sorted from the beginning. They know what works and what doesn’t. Their lifetime of success can be described in words like class monitor, perfect, senior, team-lead, area manager and on and on. (Mostly in that order)

They are measured and know when to speak and more importantly, when not to speak. They think ahead of their time and have stable carriers and relationships. They are your textbook gentlemen (women).

Naturally, these are just broad categorizations and we might share a trait or two. We know that most of us are managers and rightly so. We reason things out and make a calculated move. And that is how the world works.

Interestingly though, most of us are born as artists- ‘what heart wants type’. But as we grow up we pick up things from our environment and become more “sensible”.(So if as a kid you are crying for a toy, you have a choice to make. You can cry louder or you can fall in line as your mommy says. Toy or Thrashing. And so it goes)

Now we are not talking here about the rewards and tribulations these characters bear. We don’t know who is happier- a money raking executive of an MNC or a struggling street artist. It’s all very subjective. We are also not talking about the different external circumstances that help us become one of these characters. I know “his dad was rich, so he had the luxury of taking up photography” reasoning. True, our circumstances play a huge role in our decisions. But are we the product of our decisions or our circumstances?

What we are talking here is the different choices we make on day to day basis to stay in the league. Sacrifices, we make of our established beliefs to stay relevant.

“I don’t” becomes “I don’t want to” and eventually “it doesn’t work like that”. I am talking here about how we start justifying every act of ours in the name of realism.

Our time which could be spent doing something ‘out of the world’ and ‘mind-blowing’, is spent on everything else except for that. We worry too much about the contingencies and instead prepare for those. We prepare for presenting our ‘ordinary work’ while mindful of the fact that all the stakeholders are taking notice. That brings us to the ‘doers’ and ‘presenters’.

An artist is essentially a doer. He forgets about the time when he’s savoring his work. He doesn’t care about how it’s coming out for “the other people”. He’s too much in love with his work to let the thought of other’s opinion pollute his imagination. He is selfish.

(So now we know why most artists are unsuccessful (financially) and why ‘presentation skills’ and ‘networking’ are stressed upon in B-Schools.)

It’s interesting how we begin molding our principles to fit into the world where everyone seems to be struggling. We give ourselves the rationale, “everyone is doing it, there are so many people, they can’t be wrong”. They are not. But maybe those people never experienced how it feels to go beyond ‘just surviving’.

At this our reason quickly points out- “not everyone can act like a celebrity, normal people have to adjust”.

So maybe it’s a good idea after all. Set our standards low, not much fussing, no disappointments, everyone happy. We also have a lot of people to give us company.

But what if, when we are done with everything and have nothing more to clutch on to, we realize one day-

“We have missed so much”

“What if, we did things the other way?”

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( Originally published on Linkedin )