In the era of social media, ideas came from any directions, just like today, an account passed by my timeline, with a very interesting thought that reminded me of another similar thing I saw in the past, long time ago. There’s a similarity that immediately crossed my mind. Mediocre.
From Cambridge Dictionary, Mediocre literally means, not very good, in any case, people, work performance, movie, social life.
In our school and college days, we were taught about statistics, thing that has been planted deep in my mind, and in fact it is the most widely used measurement tools widely used to describe the condition of a population – the Normal Distribution Curve.
The left area generally represents “under”, the right are represents “over”, and the center represents “just about the right amount” – and the reason of why the center always has the biggest portion, because that’s because how the world works,
Anything that just about the right amount more often dominated the environment, there might be some deviation to the right or to the left, but it always has the biggest population in the center, and Mediocre, are those populated within this center area, so that we can hear a better term for this – Average, or Just About the Right Amount.
For the past 3 years, I’ve been thinking a lot about my career and life development, I felt that I’ve not been moving for the last 5 years, and it demotivated me knowing that 5 years ago, I saw that my life and career was like skyrocketing, and later it has just been steady, not going up nor going down, and this brought me forward to the present day, realized that I’m now the population of the center area – or the Mediocre.
If you often listening to some of the mind-blowing, heart-pumping words of motivators, you’re “not allowed” to comfortly lived as Mediocre. The Normal Distribution Curve, has been a representation of population share of an environment, in my opinion it become the law of nature, if the motivator encouraged people to move to right area of the curve as the “overperformer”, have they ever thought about the consequences? – I don’t think so, they just get paid to say the mind-blowing and heart-pumping words, however, it’s still good as a heart-warming words that can make you smile the moment you left the conference of after attended the seminar, don’t you?
There’s a reason of why some people destined to be lived in the left area, center, and right area, God created the world and the people, to live in balance and harmony, the underperformer and overperformer will always be less than the average performer – or Mediocre.
Overperformer dominated by a wealthy entrepreneur, world class CEOs, world leaders, and other public figure that has a big influence to rule the environment, what would happen if everyone shifted their position to the right area? Then everyone will wanted to rule the environment, no one will listen to each other. On the other hand, things that people are least expected to have, moving to the left area, if people move here, then no one can lead or take decisions.
Then left one last question, what if people are evenly has the same performance and evenly spread across the environment, so there will be no Normal Distribution Curve, instead it will just a rectangle graph? I don’t know what it’s called, but it seems like a very ideal situation which can only be found in an afterlife, isn’t it?
This is not a demotivation thoughts, but instead this is a way of thinking to embrace ourselves no matter what we are now. The social media post I saw today taught me, doesn’t matter if you’re not a billionaire at the age of 30, he said the grass is not always greener on the other side, you can make your own grass greener by nurturing it, living your current life at best every day, fulfill your daily passion no matter how small it is, and that what makes the grass in the center area become greener than the other side.
This is what I’m trying to do now, I realized 5 years ago, climbing the ladder to the middle management position is something that many people can do, and climbing higher, not many people can do, it’s ok if you stay in your current level, your friend you used to know may climb higher, it’s ok if you can’t catch up, you still have your life and family, these achievements will not be questioned when we die, your life scores to send you to heaven or hell, is not about the you social life position, but how you can optimize what you currently have, and whether you’re making good or bad out of it for yourself and for the society. Be grateful for it, and live happily as Mediocre, because there’s nothing wrong with it, Mediocre are in fact the contributor to equilibrium.
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