On Being Average
Thankfully, my parents never hounded me about being excellent, but they would say things like, “Do your best”. I can’t put my finger on one source of the root of over achievement issues, but I absolutely know I was digesting and absorbing this message from school from motivational posters, from books, magazines and TV shows that I was attracted to and let me tell you, “It’s ok to settle” or “It’s ok to get a C” was NEVER part of the message. Like many other false messages I had growing up from our society, “excellence in all things” became a task master and barrier to taking risks.
Fast forward a few years. The first time I had the thought or the concept about it being ok to be average was when I was living in Waco, Texas and had just given birth to my third and last born child, Mallory. I was in my thirties and had experienced a healthy dose of failure and had enough challenges to realize it doesn’t always work to be excellent. I was going through a period of time a friend of mine called “deconstruction”. I was really confused about life as a young mother and at the time ruled by a principle of efficiency and task above relationship. See here for thoughts on embracing inefficiency. Excellence was eluding me! I couldn’t work it out and I couldn’t get on top of my responsibilities. I was becoming so angry and frustrated that I knew something had to change.
I don’t know where I heard it from, but at some point during endless conversations of trying to figure out life, a friend shared with me to just try for C. We don't have to always get the A+. This rocked my world Wait, … What? So, I have been chewing on this and thinking about it for almost 18 years. This takes a lot of humbling myself and rethinking many rock solid principles. I have wrestled with letting go of standards and sorting through priorities. No one can tell you what to still try to do in an excellent way, but I can’t tell you the relief I have that I don't have to do everything awesome. It has helped me persevere with running when I want to give up because I am not a winner or fast or disciplined or enjoy competition. I started NOT doing races and just enjoying myself and doing what I can when I can.
It has helped me start playing the cello because, what if I can just enjoy learning and not have to worry about becoming Yo Yo Ma? I can let him be in charge of his gift and excellence, and I can enjoy my wee little process of being an average-almost-50 year old taking up music. That’s not very attractive sounding. My cello teacher IS EXCELLENT and sometimes I am red faced during the lesson. It’s embarrassing to be an average adult student. OH WELL!! I had to give up image and all the lies I have been sold about image. Even Yo Yo Ma doesn’t have an ego—I like to think we are kindred spirits because he also is on a journey and thinks of himself more as a human being more than as a musician —that’s his job, not identity. He is trying to work it out, too. Click here if you want to see a cool movie/project he did about The Silk Road and bringing together musicians world wide. We share a love of people and cultures AND cello.
Giving up excellence as a ruling principle frees me up to process and be curious. I have been developing as a writer, which involves research and reading and lots of solitude. I went back for a second bachelor’s in French. SO many people ask, “Wait, not a masters or PhD?” I swallow my pride and say, “Just a bachelor’s,” which is an amazing gift in and of itself, but in my world, there are a lot of PhD and Masters students!! I LOVE my degree program! I also feel more free to take risks because I don’t talk myself out of trying new things and now I know, it’s ok to try… and be average! I have nothing against excellence and I WANT my dentist and doctors and the people who build roads and bridges to be excellent, but I think what I am trying to say is that good enough is good enough. Doing everything excellent was not sustainable and or even fun any more.
I have a final thought to end with. It occurred to me as I was planning to write this that there is another take on AVERAGE. This helps me reconcile not being a slacker or having too low of standards, but rather going for the long game and the bigger vision. The AVERAGE of a life. There is grace in the ups and downs. There are many averages, like rainfall, temperature, baseball and now my life’s average. I like that.
verb
achieve or amount to as an average rate or amount over a period of time.
"annual inflation averaged 2.4 percent"
PS This has come in handy while we are going through a world wide pandemic. I keep telling my kids when they are critical of each other, “Be gracious, NO ONE knows how to do a pandemic!” My son is home from college. We all pitch in for dishes. He was lecturing, I mean sharing with me about making the process more efficient and I just smiled and said, “No, son, we can’t. It just is what it is.” There is no way I am going to try to get five people going through a pandemic on an efficient system for dishes. No, thanks. We can just be average. Some days are good, some days are not so good. That is freedom!
