what is mediocrity?

medio + ocris: Latin for “middle of a stony mountain.”

not at the top, not at the bottom. just middling.

or is it the peak?

is it the middle path?

mediocrity is waking up one morning, thinking, “why don’t I use my Rails skills to start a business analytics side hustle,” getting excited for twenty minutes then realizing that you don’t actually care about business analytics side hustles.

mediocrity is realizing that you don’t care about anything more in this moment than taking a nice long epsom salt bath, then letting yourself get out of the bath after five minutes when you realize that it’s too hot.

my grandfather shoveled coal on railroads on the weekends to pay for tuition. when he was selected for a full scholarship, they paid for his entire school uniform except for his shoes. so the whole village had to get together and pay for his shoes because he didn’t own any. later, he came to America to study special education. but there wasn’t anything called special education when he got back home, so he made it. he bought a printing press, started a publishing company, translated all the books and became the first general director of special education. did i mention that my grandfather was a refugee?

grandfather wasn’t mediocre. but grandfather was legitimately starving.

homo sapiens may be the only animal that artificially starves itself. some do it for religion, some do it for love.

here in this strange patch of earth called Silicon Valley, we do it for money. “stay hungry.” because if you’re not hungry, if you’re not passionate, and if we don’t set up society to extol these qualities above all others, then how will you ever scale your startup? how will you ever accomplish anything? how will you ever make something of your atoms?

how will you ever become grandfather who starved for you? how will you still be remembered by your children?

mediocrity is realizing that you will die in obscurity, that you have no real control over whether your children will cherish your memory

mediocrity is being a child and becoming your own parent at the same time

mediocrity is feeding yourself and letting yourself finally be full

mediocrity is caring about your job because you care about your manager and you care about the people on your team. every once in a while, mediocrity means staying up until 2 AM getting the job done because your boss is a good person and so is their boss and so is everyone else you interact with and they treat you well and with respect, and so you want to do them a solid.

turns out that mediocre workers can be A-players, you were just too busy reading Medium articles about starving to learn what they really need. you can’t feed mediocre workers bullshit capitalist dream-manure. they demand something real. mediocrity is slow food. no tricks to the mind, no shortcuts around the heart.

mediocrity is privilege. not everyone gets to be mediocre. Tamir Rice wasn’t mediocre. H1B visa holders and illegal immigrants aren’t mediocre. grandfather wasn’t mediocre.

but you don’t address privilege by trying to rid yourself of it. ethical mediocrity means spreading it. wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could live in a world without fear, where everyone could be mediocre?

at its root, what drives our fear of mediocrity? shame.

and where does that shame ultimately come from? fear.

the fear of death

and the fear that we by ourselves, as we are, aren’t enough to be loved. when people tell you to be excellent, too often they’re telling you to be afraid. always fulfilling one’s potential, never being one’s actual.

there’s an entire industry devoted to convincing us that to become great we must become hungry, or else we’ll just languish and get eaten for lunch.

but being mediocre doesn’t mean never being great. it means recognizing that you don’t have any reason to be great right now.

one day, you will be called upon to forgo your meal. but right now, no one is asking for it, so why are you harming yourself? why do you advise others to harm themselves, too? why do you perpetuate the ur-myth that to be worthy you must be hungry?

what happens when the starved become billionaires?

mediocrity is eating the apple and not feeling ashamed for the rest of eternity about it, colonizing the earth and selling the story over and over at gunpoint.

mediocrity is saying that you deserve love regardless of anything. mediocrity is saying that everyone deserves love regardless of everything.

mediocrity is resistance

mediocrity is radical

mediocrity without shame is confidence. mediocrity without fear is love.

mediocrity without salt is fried eggs you made for your wife Sunday morning.

and the pleasure of a weekend beer at 1 PM, naked in bed, all dry after your bath?

well, that’s just mediocrity without anyone around.