In today’s competitive environment, every body is trying to excel the next person and does not have the time to take a pause, reflect or enjoy the little things in life. We all want our children to be super achievers and exceptional. If every body is super achiever and exceptional, then what is its value ?
The author. Alina Tugend, writes in her article in NYT:
I wonder if there is any room for the ordinary any more, for the child or teenager — or adult — who enjoys a pickup basketball game but is far from Olympic material, who will be a good citizen but won’t set the world on fire.
“In this world, an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.”
We hold so dearly onto the idea that we should all aspire to being remarkable that when David McCullough Jr., an English teacher,told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts recently, “You are not special. You are not exceptional,” the speech went viral.
“In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement,” he told the students and parents. “We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”
She writes further;
‘And that’s a problem. Because “extraordinary is often what the general public views as success,” said Jeff Snipes, co-founder of PDI Ninth House, a corporate leadership consulting firm. “You make a lot of money or have athletic success. That’s a very, very narrow definition. What about being compassionate or living a life of integrity?”
As Ms. Kenison said, one of the most important conversations we can have with our children is what we mean by success.
“Ordinary has a bad rap, and so does settling — there is the idea is that we should always want more,” she said. “But there’s a beauty in cultivating an appreciation for what we already have.”
“I know I began writing in an attempt to heal the disconnect between what I observed around me — the pressure to excel, to be special, to succeed — and what I felt were the real values I wanted to pass on to my children: kindness, service, compassion, gratitude for life as it is,” she said.
To read the complete Article please click on the link below; There is also a video of about 7 minutes by Miss Kenison and is worth listening. Separate link for video is below;
Article link;
Video link;
The great majority of the world, regardless it be the first world, second or third, is mediocre. The mediocrity of the masses helps the cunning, the materialistic, the manipulative and occasionally the truly outstanding, to out-shine, grab the lime-light and hoard material success. There are very few self-less souls like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abdus Sattar Edhi, Mother Theresa or Joan of Arc. On the contrary the world of so-called Successfulls is filled with Wall Street Shylocks, astute political lobbyists such as Henry Kissinger, international diplomats like Tony Blair, and the whole community of mean and two-faced politicians, glib from both ends of their mouths, in the parliaments all over the world. The standards of success have changed. Goodness has been redefined. Values have evolved. Being competitive is the name of the game. Honesty, integrity, morality, human rights….. are just play-acting. To genuinely act with those virtues is the characteristic of the dimwits. Its a supply and demand phenomenon. Higher the population, meaner the populace. Success is in short supply ; it can be had only at moral gun-point. Rest assured, its going to be much worse as time goes by.
I agree with Wequar Sahib that it is going to get worse. Even in developed countries like USA, the majority of the people are average, trying hard to be exceptional, bemoaning ordinary life and in the process missing out precious moments of life one could have enjoyed. I think the key lines in the article are;
“Ordinary has a bad rap, and so does settling — there is this idea that we should always want more,” she said. “But there’s a beauty in cultivating an appreciation for what we already have.”
“one of the most important conversations we can have with our children is what we mean by success.”
Recently I saw a cartoon in one of the Medical Magazine;
The patient is saying to a busy Doctor: “You should be thankful to Uncle Sam that he is taking away most of your money in taxes, otherwise you have to find the time to spend it.”
Most of us, in the race to get more, are not even enjoying what we have–including time with family and relationships.
Fayyaz
Since the creation of society, those few who are living an extraordinary life are helping to make ordinary life worth living for the ordinary masses. It is true that ordinary masses are also explioted by some lustful extraordinary persons, but such people are not to taken as a criteria.
Mirza