I am afraid of mediocrity more than of the worst evaluations. Because it comes with self-sufficiency, convenience and not even with crass stupidity, in some cases. It’s extremely perverse. It tricks you like hell.
A weaker grade, in turn, causes you to grow, to self-indulge. If you care …
“Better be the weakest of a class of smart pupils than the smartest in a stupid class.”
My mother always said, and I grew somehow with these words: “Better be the weakest in a class of clever pupils or in a group of good people than the cleverest of a bunch of weak or mediocre people!”
You always have something to learn from better people than you.
From the weak and the stupid, you only find out how to fall, to decline, how to do… nothing to overcome your condition, to hate and take revenge at times, to stay in one place, in the very good case, to be obedient apparently, just to fight against the best, eventually. And almost always stay in silence and showing the figure of the penitent that “did not know”. You become vulnerable and easy to handle. And it’s sad.
„Oh, Lord, keep me safe from mediocrity, because from stupidity I can do it by myself!”
That is why I would reformulate in this context a well-known Romanian saying that goes like this: „Oh, Lord, keep me safe from friends, because from enemies I can do it myself!”. Its meaning is easily deductive. But I would put it like this, in this writing:
„…keep me safe from mediocrity, because from stupidity I can do it myself!”
Because it is very easy to let yourself driven by the waves and the perverse praise, to get used to it and to stop doubting about what you know and what you do, for there are plenty around you who already approve you as being good.
Instead of this, people smarter than you, in your sphere, always telling you what you have to improve, that you let criticize you, challenge you, that you constantly pursue on seeking self-surpassing, are a glory! This process becomes a construction of your own version that exceeds the larval condition.
Of course, we can fall into other traps in this escape from the modesty of the spirit: those of hard perfectionism, which can be another extreme.
But I think you can learn more and educate yourself better from looking to the highest point of yourself than from looking just in the line of your own circle, which, in turn, looks very down or obtuse rather than straight ahead or … beyond the lines of its own sphere.
Two years ago, I was motivated by the same ideas to write something like this on Facebook:
OPTIMism, OPTIM, OPTIMize, OPTIMisation, OPTimiser – to have good OPTIcs… Am I the only one seeing an inherent bound between all of these? As I was told this week that I am too optimistic and set on big goals. Look, take from my OPT (n.n. eight is opt in Romanian, and I am born on 8th of February)! And my week has not already ended…
*Well, otherwise, don’t we just hammer ourselves our own cross before digging our grave?”*
No to mediocrity, but… let’s keep the balance!
I’m not telling you to fight till exhaustion to be the best. Perfection doesn’t exist, it is relative and it depends on each of us on how we shape the idea of it. But, in order to evolve relentlessly, no matter the area (education, career, lifestyle, and way of thinking, conceptions), seek on surrounding yourself by people greater than you.
Don’t get yourself pleased with and drunk by vain exaltations and by being assigned with non-existent merits and credits by some persons that are lower than you on the scale of values.
I read a few days ago a documented article on BBC News on how to be mediocre and happy with yourself, but I think that the point of view was expressed to the extreme part, precisely by this relating to a sort of perfection: I am not convinced that being happy with mediocrity is in the human nature, especially when man becomes conscious of it and assumes theirs.
This can be only a surface or dissimulation of happiness in this context. I think that the happy mediocres are only those who get drunk by cold water, those who fall in the trap of „I am the best” (yep, but in a bunch of fools!).
And we are all mediocre, more or less, especially from this point of view, if we get to place mediocrity as a pole of such an extreme like perfection. Eventually, even that article on BBC News ends like this:
„I put it to her that all of that doesn’t sound very average to me. She pauses and laughs sheepishly. «I guess it just depends on who you’re comparing me to.»”. So, even mediocrity is relative… But the idea is: what do you do with it, when you assume it – you embrace it, simulating happiness or even being happy with it and with you being validated by weaker people, OR you run from it continuously, trying to grow daily in this escape?
I am not telling you to exhaust yourself because of the stupid ambition of surpassing X or Y in your area, or in order to be the best in a specific domain, especially if you don’t have some required abilities so well developed, and you are also aware of that. You will never succeed! There will always be someone better than you!
But the desire of surpassing our mediocrity should motivate each of us. And you can shape and chisel yourself by comparing to that better person.
You learn more from that person so as to be a better version of yourself than from complying and being comfortable with the idea „I’m good with what I am now and I am happy this way, especially because all the persons around me tell me this” – are you sure?
„Mediocritatea noastră este aceea care ne determină să părăsim, să renunţăm. Marea iubire nu ştie ce înseamnă renunţarea, n-o cunoaşte. Ea nu se resemnează niciodată, căci resemnarea, la fel ca eşecul, e pentru mediocri.” (Eugen Ionescu)
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„Our mediocrity is the one that determines us to quit, to give up. The big love doesn’t know what is quitting, it is not acquainted with this. It never resigns, because resigning, as the failure, is for mediocres.” (Eugène Ionesco)
It is easy and convenient to be mediocre, it is even an ugly trap when you are surrounded by weak people that boast you all the time, when you get validated (only) by this, without questioning about yourself. But you don’t evolve in anything by the ease and comfort.
It is better to be shaken by the critics of a better-than-you person, in order to put you in the mood of doing things better, to determine you to grow and, after a while, bring you at the level of you thanking to them, from the point of others being thankful to you, perfidiously.
See also my Romanian version of these motivational thoughts.
Front page photo source: Unsplash/Kevin Mak