Overnight Celebrity

 Is it luck or simply one's genius - one day you're just any one and next you're like no one else. The concept of ordinary people making it big really fascinates me. Why is it that some of us just have that factor in us to shine and others don't? To be very precise, I do not perceive cinematic success the only benchmark for success but celebrity to me is anyone who has made a great mark in their respective fields of study, business, art etc.

Now look at Shahrukh Khan; my mother recalls seeing him during her college days just like yet another guy on DU campus and now she is a die hard fan! What did he do right that hundreds in the Drama club didn't do? Bump into the right people who recognised his potential or just worked so hard that there was no choice? In one of his episodes of the show - Living with a Superstar, he says - "To be successful, one needs to breathe belief, eat belief, drink belief. Believe in what you want, what you desire and you'll succeed." But don't we all do that? I mean I have seldom met a person who is doing something that he/she doesn't believe in. Then what does one attribute his success to?

More than belief, I think it is the unimaginable perseverance. To me the relation between effort and success follows Hooke's Law as applicable to elastic bodies.

In layman terms, Hooke's Law states the relationship between force applied on a spring and the deformation it suffers due to that force.

I'm sure all of us have looked at an elastic spring. You press it and it bounces back. What I think is that all of us have been granted that elastic strength but a lot of us or for that matter, most of us break before we reach the phase of permanent deformation (In spring terms, when you press it and it would permanently lose its elasticity).

Using SRK's example once again, he lost his parents, lived alone, wasn't well off to afford a decent standard of living and I'm sure had matters beyond his control trying to wreck his efforts. Or take the example of Thomas Edison, he came from a poor background, was declared "slow" at school, lost hearing ability and sold newspapers at a young age. What such instances provoke me to think is that there is this driving force that one needs to surpass what so ever life puts you through without suffering permanent deformation.

It could be anything - personal satisfaction, love for the work one is doing, immeasurable desire to succeed for a loved one or just conditions that leave you with no option but to keep going.

Looking at the competitive landscape we work in, promotion to a higher position in the hierarchy is considered success. But to that one person for whom that success is a mere decoration and a reason to move ahead, there is no looking back.