As a quick disclaimer before you read this: I began writing this article in the wee hours of the night when my brain begins failing to make the distinction between deeply philosophical and utterly insane. Also, this article may seem slightly depressing at first, but I promise it gets better.
I really don’t mean to be a downer, but I have been troubled by something lately that I can’t seem to shake. Naturally I figured everyone else would want to read about it. The problem is, it seems for the past 21 years I’ve been living a life of average. You might say to yourself, “Well, that’s not so bad, average is still pretty good. I mean, it is better than just plain bad.” In one sense, I suppose you would be right. Quite literally, average means greater than anything below average. But in reality, is average actually a good thing?
When I say I live an average life, I mean almost every quality I possess is pretty average. I’m decently smart, I’m an OK writer and can sort of carry a tune. I’m decently athletic and I am in pretty good shape. The list goes on and on. In the eyes of the world, people would probably say I’m doing all right. And for the record, I am completely happy with the way my life has gone up until this point. But I’m beginning to wonder if being happy with average is not the way we are meant to be.
You see, from the moment all of us were conceived, our parents had the greatest expectations for us. From the day of our birth we were told we had the world at our fingertips and that we could be anything we wanted to be, and we were encouraged to be the best we could. Low and behold, all of these things are actually the truth.
The problem is, somewhere along the way we stop believing those ideas. I’m not sure when the exact turning point is, but eventually the world begins to squash our childlike wonderment of the world’s opportunities for us. Many of us begin to believe that being the best isn’t possible, and therefore being average is the only alternative.
So, “What’s the point?”, you may ask, and it’s a valid question. Chances are you have thought of these things before, and you haven’t come up with a solution yet. If you did, you need to hurry up and write a self-help book and cash in on it before all the good ones are written.
Now, this is not to say if you are not the best that you are failing. Obviously not every person in the world can be the greatest at something. All I am saying is if you are settling for an average life, you may be failing to reach your potential.
All that being said, my words so far do present a problem you may not have noticed. You see, by staying up late at night, thinking about being average and writing about it, I’m only making my situation worse. This is the fuel for my average fire, and we all do it. We sit around and think about how we wish things were different and then don’t change a thing. It would be so much more productive for me to just close my computer, get a good night’s sleep and focus on making tomorrow the best day of my life.
Somewhere in history mankind got the idea that contemplating your problems was accomplishing something, but we all know it isn’t. So let me be your motivational speaker via newspaper. Take today and run with it. You are already awake (at least partially), and you already have all the tools you need to make today an above-average day, so simply put them to use.
