There are two types of us: the practical ones, who keep the earth on its axis so it can rotate around the sun 24/7 and the artsy folks who lie about all day being ‘creative’.

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The two are fatally attracted to each other – and thus begins a non-love story, where Romeo gazes at the moon strumming his guitar and Juliet puts detergent on the dishes before helping the kids with the homework. The balcony scene between them, especially, is tragicomic in its home truths thrown at each other; one party says she is working her fingers to the bone trying to make both ends meet and the other is busy converting the conversation into internal angst to put into a novel he’s trying to write. ‘You don’t understand,’ he is wont to mutter, and she will just go dust the windows.

For every genuinely talented person there are at least two hundred who just fancy themselves silly as artists or sculptors or actors or singers.Mostly, it's the alternate generation that indulges in artistic expressions. The generation in the middle, ruined by the previous one’s lack of financial common sense, opens a grocery shop, fingers crossed. When the grocery shop’s bought by Walmart the younger members of the family think money boring and pursue art. Starvation brings out your basic disposition; you either suppress your urge to break into sopranos and toe the line or feverishly paint up a storm.

One is guilty of much artistic pretensions till they meet their 100% workaholic partner. Then the painstakingly created ambiance of unconventionality feels fake and self-doubt hits the hippy. On the other hand, any new artistic ambition needs long gestation periods to be articulated. Many famous female writers attribute their literary successes to broken marriages where moms stepped in to help with the kids and look after the home so that the bestseller got written.

How many times we have secretly felt superior to our dull counterparts in the world of banking or butcher-shops because we are, you know, the arty type. We know the highs (and do we know the lows!) that accompany our frenzied attempts to create art. Yes, we may lose our sanity from time to time and never make it back from the next depression, but we are alive in ways others aren’t. This is fate, we think dramatically, as we quit our desk jobs at forty and go bungee-jumping.

But now, a new study says ‘finding your passion’

may actually stand between you and what you actually love to do, simply because you close options when you choose irrevocably once and for all. According to the study by Stanford University and Yale-NUS College in Singapore and published in Psychological Science journal, this 'finding your passion’ business sets our interests as pre-determined. But thinking this way could make you quit new endeavours when things look even the slightest bit uphill. Ergo, no open mind, as you go from one thing to another, thinking the thing will call out to you, rather than the other way around. Passion then could be a ‘dangerous distraction’, warns the study.

Best to pause now and then while composing bad sonnets and look at the ceiling. It may need fixing.

Shinie Antony is a writer and editor based in Bangalore. Her books include The Girl Who Couldn't Love, Barefoot and Pregnant, Planet Polygamous, and the anthologies Why We Don’t Talk, An Unsuitable Woman, Boo. Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Asia Prize for her story A Dog’s Death in 2003, she is co-founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival and director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival.

First Published:Jul 28, 2018 12:01 AM IST