Monday, December 19, 2011

Average life

Science says humans usually over-estimate their capabilities compared to others - it is habitual to find 90% of people believing they are "above average", a fact defying the mathematical idea of an average itself.  The problem with this kind of bias is that it becomes difficult to trust yourself.  So how can we know if we are special, something everyone would probably want to be, or if we are simply average?  From childhood onward, various classification mechanisms are out there to rank us - in school, in sports, at work.  We like awards, but we like even more to be the first one on the podium, to be better, to be...above average.

Funny bias this, come to think of it, as it both ruins many pleasures of life and makes things change, innovation appear: over-estimated confidence pushing generals, managers, or scientists ahead with their crazy ideas.  Accepting being average, consciously choosing to live an average life, has always been impossibly hard for me.  It is not only hard, it is better to say I find the idea of it sad, boring, and not worthwhile to wake up in the  morning for.  I have been struggling against the average life for as long as I can remember.  Always trying to be the best, or at least different, was easy in some fields, much harder in others.  Until the day you meet someone better than you the adolescent hope in miracles remains.

But as life goes on its winding trail you repeatedly do meet the real stars - and I have in every field, in those where I thought I excelled, and in those where it was apparent from the beginning that arriving at perfection would be a big challenge to say the least.  In those cases, my famed persistence usually took over from the rational me, attempting to make up for the lack of talent with the goat-like determination.  Some call this problem the "cult of the light bulb", where the society overall believes in a discourse of a lucky inventor, but in reality most of us mortals have to work very hard and very long to be more than "average".

Where I am going with all of this?  It's a kind of an abstruse personal manifesto - although doomed to be average, let's try for the stars.  My message for the end of the year - and the beginning of a new one - even though this life of mine will probably turn out average in the end, even though it is full of mistakes, although I stumble and fall more often than not, ho tornaria a fer.  I would do it again, all over, with the same passion, determination, and drive, always believing despite painful realities, cold nights, and lonely days, that above-average is attainable.

6 comments:

AM said...

don't measure yourself from the average :)

uasunflower said...

what should be the measure then?..

AM said...

for you - the distance from the stars

for the rest of us - from the perceived limit of our abilities

uasunflower said...

:) thanks! but as my spanish friends would say "creo que te estas equivocando"...my perceived abilities are as limited as anyone's, given how much hard work I need to invest to make any kind of a qualitative jump in things that matter to me. It's probably the same for anyone, is my rationalized guess...

AM said...

yes, even exceeding my perceived abilities by 100% won't make me any closer to the stars. But we should still try, as you say. Yet, the most important things/moments in life somehow don't seem to be related to any kind of measurements. Like when you experience smthg you never thought possible. Or a rare simple moment of happiness and freedom. There are times when you're closer to the stars and that has nothing to do with the distance from the "average".

uasunflower said...

agreed with the second part. Spent a magic evening with a fire yesterday, and was thinking of National Forests and cold nights...Measurements are an invention of a bored mind.

The first part - only you are the judge.