“Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you”

The subject of this thread, as you may well know, is Salieri’s final message in Milos Forman’s monumental Amadeus, the (fictitious) story about Wolfgang Mozart as perceived by one of his contemporaries, Antonio Salieri. In the film, Salieri was tortured by having to witness the infantile and cocky Mozart excel in every aspect of classical music, the one thing that Salieri had devoted his entire life to. It drove him mad. In the end, it subjected him to admit and embrace mediocrity (I'm sure going nuts helped him on the way).

Salieri’s words have been ringing loud in my ears over the past few months. It's not that I'm struggling with mediocrity. Rather, I’m struggling to even pass as mediocrity. All this may sound like an ode to woeful self-pity, but don't get me wrong - I like to see it as my inner self seeking first contact with the outside world.

You see, for all his moral lapses, Salieri's character really had nothing to be ashamed of. At the end of the day, he had devoted his life to what he loved: music. I wholeheartedly admire people with that ethos, the spirit of doing what you want to do deep down, regardless of whether you end up surpassed by a Mozart one day. The journey is as important as the destination.

The last episode of Irrational Interviews, part two of a chat with Guillermo del Toro, revolved around Guillermo and Ken Levine being confounded over how people waste their short lives on doing stuff they’re not passionate about. It struck a highly resonant chord with me. Moreover, I recently had my first encounter with Ayn Rand’s writing to boot. While I dislike her narrative style and certain philosophical convictions vehemently, her point about work ethics and the value of creation hit home to the point that I had to wrestle off a bout of self-contempt.

Even then, in spite of all these discoveries and momentous sensations, I still confine myself to a padded box of meaningless conformity. Not only am I not brave enough to stick my neck out, I don’t even know what I would stick it out for and how I would go about doing it. In my world, beer is drunk not brewed, culture is consumed not created, and a job is a job is always a job.

So you - the Guillermo del Toros, Ken Levines, Milos Formans and Certises/Elysiums of the world - where do you draw your ambition, your resolution and your courage from, to discover and nurture your passions and thereby do your own existence justice?

You know, it always amazes me when the few "greats" spout rubbish about unique snowflakes from the soapboxes built on the necks of ordinary people. Yes, it's great to follow your dreams and be special. But someone still has to wash the dishes, take the garbage to the landfill, bury the dead, clean and unclog the toilets, etc. How long do you suppose would our society last if everybody was une grande artiste?

[/soapbox spouting]

On mediocrity - don't knock it until you've tried it.

I'd define myself as a cynical realist, and my cynical take of reality is that by and large, we're *all* mediocre. You see that world-class violinist? Bet he's mediocre at videogames - I could probably kick his ass at Halo. Sure, he'd beat me in a violining contest, but I'm OK with being way sub-mediocre at playing the violin.

My point is this - if you consider that in any given field of expertise, by definition, half of us are worse than mediocre, then you have to accept that in many fields, you're going to suck. In some fields, you're going to be hopeless, and in a precious few fields, you'll excel.

I'm confident that I'm comfortably above mediocre in the fields that I apply myself too and care about. I'm damn far from world class in any of them, and I'm just fine with that.

I see the the op less about questioning mediocrity and more about taking a chance to follow a passion.

Sometimes you just have to do what feels right, and often times it's going to go against what is considered normal but if you don't try, you're doing yourself a massive injustice. What's the worst thing that can happen if you try? You can fail. Does a failure mean you can no longer chase your passions? No. You simply try and try again, until you feel your success.

I took a chance and ended up in a creative industry, one of my passions. As in the games industry, if you don't have passion for what you're doing, you don't last long in this biz and I've been around for a while.

Jonman wrote:

On mediocrity - don't knock it until you've tried it.

I'm confident that I'm comfortably above mediocre in the fields that I apply myself too and care about. I'm damn far from world class in any of them, and I'm just fine with that.

I'm not knocking mediocrity by any means, and I agree completely with what you're saying. I tip my hat to mediocrities as well as successes who, as you say, have applied themselves to their passion. They truly deserve credit and Salieri's absolution.

What I'm talking about is a dearth of passion, a lack of commitment to what you're doing. Whether you really are unclogging toilets or burying dead people, there's a huge difference between someone who does it with dignity and professional pride and someone who does it because that's where he ended up, because he didn't know where he wanted to go or what he would have been proud to apply himself to.

And the latter's exactly where I am.

I understand and even relate. I look back to the hours spent as a child and middle school student drawing my own comic strips, dreaming of being a cartoonist. But, after hearing the importance of money all my life and jokes of being a starving artist, I decided to try for a "more profitable" passion by wanting to be a video game programmer.

I struggle to draw now, or do comic stuff. I loved writing, but I can't get myself to do it at the end of a 40 hour work week. I have all these things I'd love to do, but I don't have the drive or willpower.

It's like a little burning bunch of coals where my passions used to be, and I don't have the kindling to toss in to make a fire.

"That question is bullsh*t."

Jonman wrote:

On mediocrity - don't knock it until you've tried it.

I'd define myself as a cynical realist, and my cynical take of reality is that by and large, we're *all* mediocre. You see that world-class violinist? Bet he's mediocre at videogames - I could probably kick his ass at Halo. Sure, he'd beat me in a violining contest, but I'm OK with being way sub-mediocre at playing the violin.

My point is this - if you consider that in any given field of expertise, by definition, half of us are worse than mediocre, then you have to accept that in many fields, you're going to suck. In some fields, you're going to be hopeless, and in a precious few fields, you'll excel.

I'm confident that I'm comfortably above mediocre in the fields that I apply myself too and care about. I'm damn far from world class in any of them, and I'm just fine with that.

+1. Exellence in any sense is really relative.

MothBeHe wrote:

I'm not knocking mediocrity by any means, and I agree completely with what you're saying. I tip my hat to mediocrities as well as successes who, as you say, have applied themselves to their passion. They truly deserve credit and Salieri's absolution.

What I'm talking about is a dearth of passion, a lack of commitment to what you're doing. Whether you really are unclogging toilets or burying dead people, there's a huge difference between someone who does it with dignity and professional pride and someone who does it because that's where he ended up, because he didn't know where he wanted to go or what he would have been proud to apply himself to.

And the latter's exactly where I am.

I hear you buddy - I'm in a reasonably similar place. I don't really enjoy my job, and it scratches very few of my itches, but it does take care of the paying the bills stuff that allows me to indulge in the things that I *am* passionate about, albeit that none of them earn me a penny.

I've mostly made my peace with the fact that what I'm good at isn't likely to give me that sense of fulfillment. The upshot of that is that I need to be damn sure I'm seeking out that fulfillment outside of my professional life, and so far, so good.

Saw this quote today and thought of this thread:

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."
-Henry Van Dyke

ccesarano wrote:

I understand and even relate. I look back to the hours spent as a child and middle school student drawing my own comic strips, dreaming of being a cartoonist. But, after hearing the importance of money all my life and jokes of being a starving artist, I decided to try for a "more profitable" passion by wanting to be a video game programmer.

I struggle to draw now, or do comic stuff. I loved writing, but I can't get myself to do it at the end of a 40 hour work week. I have all these things I'd love to do, but I don't have the drive or willpower.

It's like a little burning bunch of coals where my passions used to be, and I don't have the kindling to toss in to make a fire.

That's exactly it! I used to write my own metal music fanzine at 15-18 years of age. Then I spent 7-8 years studying and living abroad, loving most of it. Now I work as a researcher for a global executive headhunter, of all things, making a career out of other people's careers.

"Now how the hell did I end up here?" is what I ask myself everyday, staring blankly at my screen with bloodshot eyes. Needless to say, by the time I get home from work I feel drained of all that giddiness and enthusiasm that used to spur me on with my fanzine and my academic ambitions.

I have this theory about humanity.

More than 99% of us, probably more than 99.999% of us, exist to support what I call "The Reachers". The people who, intentionally or accidentally, propel humanity forward. I'm talking the big moments. The Gutenberg printing press, Mozart's catalog of works, penicillin, etc.

You can't invent the printing press if you're also growing/hunting your own food, sewing your own clothes, protecting yourself from thieves, etc. So every day that I go to work, I spend my time stopping speeders, writing kids MIP tickets, etc. Because there it's what's needed to keep humanity going. Somewhere there is a student at a university who will be the crucial link in cold fusion, curing cancer, or more. They need people to stop the thieves around them, keep their street safe, and keep them (or their friends) from killing themselves with alcohol. They need people to cook and serve their food, clean their bathroom, etc.

Not in a servile way. But because it's the natural order of things. Every single person is important. it's not like my job is less important because I'm not the one solving the cold fusion issue. That person can't do their job if they're cold, starving, sick, or dead.

InspectorFowler wrote:

I have this theory about humanity.

More than 99% of us, probably more than 99.999% of us, exist to support what I call "The Reachers". The people who, intentionally or accidentally, propel humanity forward. I'm talking the big moments. The Gutenberg printing press, Mozart's catalog of works, penicillin, etc.

You can't invent the printing press if you're also growing/hunting your own food, sewing your own clothes, protecting yourself from thieves, etc. So every day that I go to work, I spend my time stopping speeders, writing kids MIP tickets, etc. Because there it's what's needed to keep humanity going. Somewhere there is a student at a university who will be the crucial link in cold fusion, curing cancer, or more. They need people to stop the thieves around them, keep their street safe, and keep them (or their friends) from killing themselves with alcohol. They need people to cook and serve their food, clean their bathroom, etc.

Not in a servile way. But because it's the natural order of things. Every single person is important. it's not like my job is less important because I'm not the one solving the cold fusion issue. That person can't do their job if they're cold, starving, sick, or dead.

Sure, but let me ask you this: when you stop those speeders and hand out those MIP tickets, do you feel like you've made a difference? Do you have a sense of ownership in what you are doing? Or are you doing it just to put the proverbial food on the table?

I made a mistake in my initial post calling out to the Mozarts and Formans of the world. I should have been addressing the Antonio Salieris and the Andrew Ryans, because I'm not talking about reaching super stardom and revolutionary insight through what you do or create. I'm simply talking about believing in the value of your work, whatever the measure of your success.

Well, yes and no.

I don't feel like my individual tickets always make a difference (I can tell you stories about how they really did). But if I didn't do my job, and nobody did, things would be pretty bad, right?

I guess I'm pretty aware of my place in the universe - I know that I'm super replaceable. Somebody else could do my job and there wouldn't be a substantial impact in the universal flow. But a person must do my job, and so I do it. I do it both to put food on the table, and also because I know the work must be done. Don't get me wrong - if I won Lotto I'd be out of there in a heartbeat.

But the reality is that most people aren't going to be slotted into some awesome job that they feel totally useful in. Most nights I cruise around, hoping to surprise a burglar, or stop a suicide, or save somebody's life with an AED. The reality is that I have done none of these in four years on the street. But it doesn't make me feel that I am useless, or mediocre. I am only mediocre if I choose to do my work to substandard levels. Like I say, somewhere there is a great person working on something fantastic. They need the help of cops, nurses, customer service agents, janitors, etc. I might help them, I might not. I just know I'm not one of them, and that is fine.

I consider the greatest achievement of my life so far was to learn how to be happy. All the other stuff, like a happy marriage and growing family have sprung from that.

Step one in learning to be happy was learning that aiming for the success others expected of me was not what I wanted for myself.

The OP made me immediately think of this Onion article. The first time I read that I almost cried, it hit so close to home.

Do any of you guys believe that everyone is a master (if master is too strong, then "really really good") at at least one thing? That's something I believe. And one of my biggest fears is that I will never figure it out what my thing is. So far I have been mediocre at pretty much everything I've ever done. I try tons of stuff, sports, creative arts, music, tinkering with electronics, games, whatever, but I haven't found anything that I'm passionate about to the point it would drive me to be "really really good" at that thing. I try not to think about it because when I do, it makes me very depressed. I think I've gotten better at learning to be happy, like Maq says, but now and then I think about that article and I have a relapse.

Wasn't Mediocrities one of Plato's lesser achieving students?

In response to Inspector Fowler, I definitely get what you're saying. As that cool Irish/Scottish/Somewhereupthere Guy said in Bioshock, "someone has to clean the toilets". Not everyone is meant to achieve something great, and in truth, most people are meant to be farmers. Regular, every day work just to survive.

It's hard to describe a passion to create, though. A desire inside to entertain people. I've kept so many story ideas to myself, but recently have begun trying to open them up. I recently joined an RP forum to try and get some creativity out of my system. Lo and behold, I'm getting compliments everywhere on my thoughts, ideas, and ability to create interesting, 3-dimensional characters.

It's like it is something inside that you can't kill, but the actual motivation is dead. If that makes any sense?

I don't want super stardom or anything. I just want to make something that entertains people. But the drive to even sit down and work on my online comic, a more simple strip than some of my more ambitious ideas, just...it's almost not there.

I like to blame the fact that the education system told me a bunch of lies and screwed me over, but in the end, I wish my stupid high-school self followed what my brain wanted when I was a kid. To just take a crappy retail job or something to pay the bills so I could instead focus my brain power on making a comic that could possibly get published. I read something like Scott Pilgrim and think to myself "God dammit, with the right choices, that could have been me!"

Of course, I could be egotistical in that regard, but you get me, right?

This thread hits real close to home for me. For the longest time (read at least 10 years), I have just "Existed". I go to work 5 days a week and pay my bills; at home I play video games or watch Netflix. I am an introvert with almost no social life.

I can't say I'm happy at work but, I know I am Happier when I am working. I was raised to work hard and provide for you and yours; I actually get annoyed when I have to go to work and get paid and I'm not working on billable projects. Going to work is what gets me out of bed in the morning and, that is true even if I hate my job with every fiber of my being.

I have some deeper things I could say here but, they would be dealing with much deeper issues than I'm ready to spread on the internet.

Spoiler:

We are all going to die sometime so what is the point type stuff.

Spoiler:

Actually that pretty much is all my deeper issues, go GWJ!

It's important to keep in mind the sub-text of fame and recognition that these discussions always dance around.

I recognize that Moth's OP is clearly about finding a passion, and not necessarily fame or recognition. However, if I found a cure for Cancer but died poor, alone and unappreciated in my own time, would that change things? Inspector Fowler suggests to me that it's ok not to find a cure for Cancer or be lauded, because doing good work is its own reward. Or at least, it's the foundation for everything else. Doing good work makes you a part of humanity's forward momentum.

People who become famous and wealthy often do so because they worked hard in obscurity for years and then got a lucky break. Often that "luck" is just the historical circumstance they found themselves in. Both things had to happen. But they were remarkable in their attitude and their actions first. There are (hopefully) billions of people like Inspector Fowler who are doing so-called "average" things for the right reasons.

We can all think of exceptional cases where someone won the lottery and became a saint, or was raised into stardom prematurely and turned into an alcoholic, or was a rich dictator who lost everything and finally learned humility.

But this is all just to say that it's very tough to disentangle the relationship between fame and passionate exceptionality. If we received more recognition for the job we're not happy with, would that placate us? Or would we be willing to give up even the most prestigious position if we felt like we weren't making a difference?

Just something to keep in mind. We use Guillermo del Toro as an example because he's who we see. How many other Guillermo del Toros are out there who we will never hear about? Some will become alcoholics because of that. Others will be satisfied with the struggle to create great things in itself.

Maq wrote:

Step one in learning to be happy was learning that aiming for the success others expected of me was not what I wanted for myself.

I think a lot of people would be much more satisfied with their lives if they really internalized this. It can be hard to see through the fog of family expectations, and the overwhelming pressure our culture exerts to be successful to be a winner and follow your dreams. And those definitions of success are imposed on us, rarely something that springs organically from within.

It's 99% bullsh*t. The idea that everyone has some passion that they can be successful at, have a career they love, is just poisonous.

The secret to being happy with your work is to be your own boss. You can't always actually do that in terms of title or organization, but you can always, always take charge of your own life and apply the changes to yourself.

Malcolm Gladwell says something about this which I totally agree with. The secret to satisfying work is for it to have the following elements:

"Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…

If you are convinced that the work you are doing is meaningful, then curiosity, there’s no cost to it. If you think there’s always got to be a connection between what you put in and what you get out, then of course you’ll run off with a great excitement after an idea that catches your idea."

- Malcolm Gladwell

Most jobs have a baseline level of requirement that is easy to meet, is dictated your boss, never affects your self worth, and is fairly simple and repeating. It is not what Gladwell would call meaningful, and it is not what I would call happy work.

However, your boss is not you, and the only real boss of you is you. Most bosses appreciate initiative in the right doses and location, you just have to have the initiative to seek out the additional work that you think will make a difference TO YOU.

Do you have extra time in your life as a police officer? Have some time to kill at work? I myself am not a traffic professional, but if I were, I might find my identity and happiness in work doing these additional things:

Work out and train in self-defense.
Become an expert motorcycle machinist.
Become a pistol marksman
Learn to read lips and how to speak Spanish

My sense of fulfillment in achieving these objectives is linked to my job. I'm not content to just be a beat cop or a highway patrol cop. I'm going to be the best goddamn patrol cop that ever worked the area. I want to be so awesome, people will think I'm a goddam comic book hero.

There are other ways to be exceptional of course, each of us according to his or her strengths. Like tech? Load your bike with gadgetry you like. You a people person? Chat up the guys on your route so you literally know everything on your beat better than the local gossip. Good at sports? Train to run so fast, you won't even need your bike to run down fleeing criminals.

The point is to find ways to make it so that your work becomes self-driven, complex, and rewarding.

Where I struggle is in the "burying your talents" idea. Sure, I've got passions and interests--lots of them, even. But I also have this genius-level IQ that I'm using to send letters, read letters, and write reports about the letters we send and receive. It feels wasteful.

wordsmythe:

Whoever it is who thinks they're wasting their genius-level IQ sending letters has an overinflated sense of their own capabilities.

I'm just saying:

I've had the misfortune of finding the one thing at which I am better than the majority of the population.
It's something that I can do for money. It's something that I can do and I don't get tired or bored of it. While I'm doing it time passes in that way that you find yourself at the end of the day wondering where it went.

I also found out that in Ontario Canada you can make about $80 a day as a ski instructor; which is somewhere around the poverty line.

I'm not even saying that I'm a prodigy at it. Of all of the people that ski in Canada, I'm probably in the top 50%, if I were to be ranked on skill (and I'm counting on a vast quantity of skied once types). Among professional ski instructors, I'm probably about average, or slightly above.

I could probably teach year round, around the world travelling with the season, but I didn't find out that I was fairly good at it until I was settled, had a career, and a family, house, lawn, bills, taxes....

Keep in mind that I am applying this primarily to what you do for a living, in terms of accepting yourself as useful no matter your job or career.

Your hobbies and other items can be separate, or related. My world view assumes that you're going to need something to relax from whatever your work is, and that your interests may run completely counter to your career. My view on the "Reachers" and the people who support them really is less about making yourself less crazy about your job and more about accepting that no matter what job you do, you probably aren't going to be the one who changes humanity, even though you will still support that process.

If tomorrow I took a metaphorical arrow to the knee (more realistically, if my fat ass tripped down some stairs and destroyed a knee joint) and I had to change careers, for a while I would probably be less happy in my new position. I might need to "cast about" for a while before I found something that suited me. But as I've grown older at least I've developed the perspective that virtually any kind of gainful employment is useful, because somebody is paying you for it, and they aren't getting that money from the money tree. So while, for my own sanity, I might need to hunt down a new career, my self-esteem probably wouldn't be in the crapper that whole time.

I developed this while I worked in the jail. Our local jail is a great facility, but I hated every minute of working there. Every minute of four years and three months. But I eventually realized that if I wasn't doing it, somebody else would be - and virtually every single job on the planet is like that. So while I don't advocate blindly loving your job even if you want to die every second you're there, I want people to have the perspective that even the most menial, upsetting, or unpleasant task has value. There is a difference, albeit sometimes a difficult to see one, between simply hating your job because it makes you miserable, and hating yourself because you feel there is no value in your job.

I tend to be a little more broad about what I think "changes humanity." There's a lot of hoopla, fame, and fortune about people who you call "Reachers," InspectorFowler, but I don't know that they actually change humanity all that much. They may sometimes point the way, but they don't get us there.

The people who I view as the real movers and changers of humanity are the "points," - the "pushers," and the first real practitioners. Albert may have deduced E = MC2, but the relevance of that exercise and that deduction is largely lost on most of humanity. In a very real way, he's a precursor - a very famous scientist who made later events possible, but not a mover, nor a shaker.

People who change humanity are people like the first guy who started the chain of pet rocks, the people who thought broadcast music would be cool, and the first Nigerian who made it as a con artist. These guys change our world for real, and they're unknown because they're mostly normal-ish people. Their actions would not resonate with large segments of humanity if they weren't.

Maq wrote:

I consider the greatest achievement of my life so far was to learn how to be happy. All the other stuff, like a happy marriage and growing family have sprung from that.

Step one in learning to be happy was learning that aiming for the success others expected of me was not what I wanted for myself.

This.

Once you have figured this out, everything else usually falls into place.

This may be a little bit off-topic, but I wanted to say that when it comes to greatness, the movers and shakers of the world and the most famous celebrities are not always the most gifted, talented, or interesting. A couple nights ago I went to see Florence + The Machine. Florence Welch is an amazing singer, and her musical style encompasses everything from celtic and medieval melodies to rock to blues to electronica. She also writes songs based on Shakespeare and the Romantic Poets. But I guarantee you that she's far less popular and makes less money than hacks like Ke$ha or self-absorbed jerks like Kanye West. That's just the way of the world - Kim Kardashian makes a lot more money than millions of dedicated actors and musicians who are out there busting their humps at the local level. She's famous for being famous. Or look at all the Republican candidates running for office. None of them could remotely be mistaken as great statesmen or historical leaders. They're by-and-large only good at working a corrupt political system, Gingrich especially. And so it doesn't seem like I'm only picking on the Republicans, the same can honestly be said of President Obama.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't confuse fame and fortune for greatness, or feel bad because you're not in the jet-set. Some of the greatest artists of the world languished in obscurity until after their deaths. Other great men like George Washington paid terrible prices and didn't receive that much recognition until at least a generation or two later.

If on the other hand you feel you can do more with your life, then that's something anyone can accomplish. I think on a career level I'm doing well - I'm in a field I love and helping a lot of people in my job. My problem is that I feel I don't do enough after-hours. But the first trick would be to figure out what you want in life. If you could have a dream job within reason (ie, design video games but not necessarily be Ken Levine), what would it be? I say "within reason" because dreaming too big makes your goals seem like childish fantasies. Maybe you could become the next Levine, but first you need to have the courage to make your first mod.

Good thread! I ended up recording a quick 10 minute thing about it because apparently I can't write words down any more. I'll drop a link when it's online.