My struggle with Mediocrity
It’s not mine alone, for I have seen many juggling it with their attempt at living — the constant choice between taking a step forward and moving an inch back.
It suits us — mediocrity — as we have chosen to be common, to lay in the comforts of a constant life, to stay away from fear and sleepless nights.
At best, only our vices trouble us, but never our dreams.
Maybe we have stopped dreaming as it became hard to remember the dreams and recognize ourselves from them. It is easy, as it is conventional, to be yourself the way you are supposed to and to belong where you’ve been used to — by will or circumstance.
Dreaming is hard, and so is believing in them. We don’t remember our dreams because we stopped believing in them.
The promise of an easy life managed to make its way to the cervices of my life plan, my future and the days awaiting them. In the safety of those days, the idea of falling is fearsome; leave the fear of facing the fall.
Thus, I made a pact for that safe bearing and passage thereon, with common thought, common belief, and common goal. And now that everything is so common, the path is common too. Here, I shake hands with mediocrity.
I am of the opinion, that this safety, this slumber, the common, mediocre living, has taken from me more than what loss it had managed to avert. Hell, I have stopped feeling proud of myself any longer! I simply don’t get any chance. Most things I achieve or accomplish fall under a presumption or a basket of calculations.
Life is more probable than it used to be ‘possible’ earlier. It is more ‘plausible’ than it should be applaudable. Whatever I gained in time, I have wasted in praying for more of what I have.
Maybe that is a good life; maybe I should appreciate it more if I knew it could be better. My life could be better. Had I tried any better or decided away from fear, more from the mind of my desires than the common sense of my peers. I have chosen for myself their dreams, their ideas, and their goals. No doubt I find myself more like them, reduced to the average of all the greats and all the goofs.
Look, how unsettling it is for me to be doing better than most! Maybe I’ve been long silent or long asleep, so long that it’s before long dead, I could be alive and ask questions. Can’t I?
My struggle with mediocrity is like that; I try to fight it when it only plays with me.
Ginni Chauhan 2024
