The inspirational quotes about avoiding mediocrity and being your "best self" are flooding modern day media. Almost everywhere I look and everything I read urges people to dare to be different and evade a lackluster life filled with menial work and insufficient happiness. I recently read an article written by Dharmesh Shah that was titled "Failure Is Not The Worst Outcome, Mediocrity Is." I'm not sure what happened or where it came from, but I was immediately overcome with emotion. I didn't understand why I got so upset reading it. It had nothing to do with me and was strictly speaking about advancing in the world of business, but it infuriated me. This constant flow of information being shot at us to always be better and do better is exhausting. Can't we just be?
In the past I've felt myself be so consumed with trying to be great, and then constantly hating where I fell in the distribution curve of life. I felt so average. Whether it was my grades, my athletic and artistic ability, my looks, my humor, my compassion and pretty much everything about me, I felt small and unable to match my rivals of the world. And then I got sick of it.
I got sick of feeling stagnant. I got sick of being envious of other people's lives. Yes, envy and jealously are two common and normal human emotions, but there was a point where it preoccupied me from living my own life.
I'm sorry to all the self help gurus and motivational speakers out there, but I say we should take on the world with a different approach. Let's embrace our mediocrity because that's what most of us are. We're not all 8-year-old violin prodigies, or 14-year-old gold medalists, we are mediocre. We are beautiful, complex, crazy humans laughing and loving our way through mediocre lives.
Don't get me wrong, I still believe we should strive to be our personal bests, but in areas that breathe light and energy into our sense of a meaningful, but most of all happy life. Be a better friend, not a better associate. Be a better listener, not a better colleague. Be better as a person because this in turn will better the world. But don't look at yourself in the mirror and feel you are not good enough because you are not "great." Greatness is not something to be measured, it's something to be admired. I'm happy for the prodigies and genetic anomalies born into greatness, but my life is not less important because I am mediocre.
So embrace your mediocrity, love yourself and love your life.
