#Celebrating#mediocrity

The other day I played audience to the speech of the COO of a well-known organization, as he went on and on about how his organization is the best because it hires the best. He said that his organization worked with only the best of skills and talents and if a certain someone fell short of being “best” he was “weeded out” of the system. After listening for some time, I just could not take it anymore. I felt that he was advocating absolute mercilessness towards anyone below “par excellence”.

This makes me often wonder if there is anything criminal about mediocrity. Why do we demean mediocrity? Why do we say “average” with the air of benign tolerance? As though everything and everyone had a bounden duty to be excellent.   I agree we need to strive towards excellence, but everyone is not gifted with a good measure of brain or brawn so as to be excellent. Excellence requires a lot of single minded effort and utter devotion to the task, activity or objective. And such devoted effort requires time. Excellence also requires a good measure of intelligence. Intelligence which is more God gifted than man created.

So, one can be excellent in one or two things, but not in everything. Also, it is not necessary that the one or two things that one is excellent in pertains to one’s work life. If one’s area of excellence is not visible in the work one does to earn a living, it does not necessarily mean that he or she is not fit for that line of work and deserves to be “weeded out” of that job or organization. Mediocrity implies being able to do something reasonably well with minimum failure.  This is not an easy task.

In this world which over-rewards excellence and over-punishes anything below excellence it is very stressful to continuously strive for excellence in every bit that we do. This stress causes us to burn out and embitters our life. Let’s tutor ourselves to be comfortable with our mediocrity in some areas while we lead a less-stressed and balanced sweet life.

Cheers to mediocrity! Being mediocre is no mean achievement.