Jo jeeta wohi sikandar - koi shaq?

You go to a party. You meet people. You meet an artist. A painter, or a theatre actor or an entrepreneur and people around you go “Hey wow, you are an artist! Must take a lot of passion, dedication and talent to do what you do. Hats off to you man.”

Recently a friend, who has discovered her true calling, mentioned that the only reason she was able to find a whole new alternate passion for herself was because she was surrounded by creative people and not corporates. 

Poor poor corporate folks – they really sound like such downers. Like zombies.

But I ask you, does it not take dedication, passion and sheer commitment to also be a corporate employee and excel in what you do? Does the difference all lie in doing something for yourself vs doing it for someone else?

I am a marketer. I tell stories. I tell them creatively. I tell them to internal stakeholders and I tell them to millions of customers. Just because I don’t tell them on a canvas or on a stage, does that make my passion any lesser than that of an artist’s? Why am I labelled a corporate slave while another is put on a pedestal for trying really really hard to stretch themselves, to push their boundaries and create something, every day.

If a painter hasn’t watched a movie in months coz he was busy painting, we admire his dedication. If I haven’t watched a movie in months coz I too have been busy, I am pitied. Bahut nainsaafi hai!

As I was growing up, I used to tell myself that I want to be able to "create". And for the longest time I, like everyone else, thought creativity is only restricted to the arts. That thought itself is the end of creativity. Isn't it?

Every powerpoint presentation I make, I feel like Picasso coz each slide needs to be perfect in the way it looks and the story it tells. Every time I resolve an issue, every time I think of a new idea to disrupt, every time I help my team members get ahead – I feel a sense of accomplishment in having stretched myself and doing so with utmost excitement. And yet, all I am ever labelled is a corporate rat. I am spoken to with sympathy even, things like “Oh god, how horrible to be slogging so much….its terrible that you had to do something overnight” etc etc. Don’t artists slog? Don’t they work day and night and prepare hard to come up with their creation? When they do it, its passion and talent, when I do it, its incorrigible?

Why?

Who decided what kind of passion and dedication is more remarkable than the other? And who decided that working in a corporate environment cannot be done with passion and that just because you are working for someone else, you must be deadpan? Who decided that talent is only what the world knows how to admire externally? No sir, it takes equal amount of creativity and expression of one’s intellect to solve real world problems everyday. Day after day. Without an iota of diminishing enthusiasm.

Woh karen toh chamatkar aur hum karen to atyachaar! How is that fair?