Consider this case: There are surely many hotshot professional photographers out there. Many of them making a lot of money, too. It is definitely a high paying career if you are good at it.

But pause for a moment and think: what would all these photographers have done if the camera had never been invented? Would they have careers in engineering or medicine or the army perhaps? Would they have been just as “successful?”

Or, would their creative minds express themselves in other forms? Then again, the question arises: would they be as successful and as expressive?

Creativity may or may not find a way. Sure.

But they have to make a living too and amidst the traffic jams of making a living, would that creative talent hidden someplace (waiting for the camera to get invented perhaps) be unleashed?

Yes, these are a lot of questions, and there could be many view points on this.

These are some of the thoughts that returned one day several years ago, in a discussion with my professor at one of the most prestigious universities in South Asia, the Indian Institute of Technology, when he talked about a question that he and his wife were asked at a high school as part of the admission process for their daughter.

He was asked the question: what would be your attitude if your daughter would be interested in making a career in the fine arts or some creative field like that?

My professor, who himself is the son of a renowned Bombay photographer and an Oxford-educated computer engineer, answered that he would surely encourage it, but would definitely urge his daughter to take up some vocation that would guarantee a steady income as something to fall back on. His own experience has been that to be successful as a purely creative professional, you need a certain amount of luck and the right breakthroughs at the right time.

He may have been right; at least from the context of a Third World country, but I would put it across a little differently. I would say that no matter what you do in life, whatever kind of vocation interests you, you have to have an attitude for excellence. No matter what, you must have a knack to earn money and success out of whatever you do.

You have to learn to live and earn your bread and butter out of what you love to do.

Every period of time has its own opportunities. Every cross section of history has had its own formula for success. And we only need to look around to see them. In the book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that about twenty years ago, the opportunity was in computers. Anyone who had in him to work with computers or start a company related to computers about two decades ago, has not only made a lot of money, but has made it big. Microsoft, Apple and Accenture are just a few examples.

Similarly, times are certainly changing. New opportunities are on the way. So my argument is that every point of history has its own set of rules to play with. Our inventions, policies, all of it shape these rules. You cannot count to ten unless you count up to nine. When a friend of mine once told me about another friend who “was just born to succeed,” I replied, “no, that guy’s talents were just tailor made for our times.”

Sunil is a graduate student in Lyle School of Engineering.