As a pair of overachievers, we once cringed at the words, ”I’ll be grading this test on a curve,” when spoken by a professor right after we just breezed through what others apparently thought was a pretty hard test. Of course, we welcomed them on the occasions when we finished up an exam that had us so befuddled we weren’t sure we had even answered “Name” correctly. That was all a lifetime ago when college life had little to do with life life. Real life isn’t graded on a curve.
Of course, you know the reason to grade “on a curve” is to push more results into the average middle of the sample. What’s so terrible about that? It just means there is a lot more “average” going on than exceptional. Not a bad thing when you consider that on a curve, and in life, there is just as much exceptionally bad as there is exceptionally good. If the odds of complete failure are as good as unqualified success, can you blame anybody for betting on the even money of being okay?
Average has a bad reputation, and unjustifiably so. Do the internet search “on being average” and the results will make you feel like average is failing. Recommended readings include topics like “How to deal with being average,” “Coming to terms with being average,” and “The fear of being average.” Even the definition of average has been skewed. The Collins On-Line Dictionary says that average is, “neither very good nor very bad, usually when you had hoped it would be better.”
We say celebrate average! The OG in dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary includes among the definitions of average, “a level that is usual or typical.” No qualifiers, no hoping for better. It’s usual, you might even say normal. Who doesn’t like normal?
There is nothing wrong with normal. There is something wrong with assuming that what you see online is normal. Perfectly posed and lighted social media photos, social posts with thousands of “likes,” or having more online friends than you can fit into your living room if you decided to invite them over is not typical of real life, and is not something to aim for.
Equating average with mediocre is not a modern concept. Long before social media turned the “typical” user into likening more followers with more power, we identified power with superheroes and their following. But remember, even superheroes are not good at everything, and just like Superman has his Kryptonite, something can always defeat them.
This doesn’t mean you should not try to improve yourself, do your best, and aspire to greater things. It means, if you don’t, it doesn’t make you a failure. There are over 8 billion people in the world. Maybe 1,000 of them are truly exceptional, remarkable people who have great influence on the world. But all the other 7,999,999,000 people can and do have a great influence on their world.
You too can and do have a great influence on your world. You may not be exceptional in all things, and maybe you can’t post the perfect picture on social media. But you can be exceptional at something. And if you are willing to admit it, you know you are also pretty bad at something else. For everything we have done right, for every promotion we’ve had a work, and for every success we’ve celebrated, there have been other jobs that eluded us, other contests we didn’t win, other games we can’t play. We work to improve our weaknesses and use out strengths to help others improve theirs.
Average is not mediocre, is not failing, is not something to “come to terms with.” Average is what most of us are most of the time. And when we do find something to succeed at, to be a model of, to become better at, average is what makes us recognize how really good we really can be. You might say on average, we do pretty well.
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