On the courage to be ordinary
I am meant to be special, exceptional, wildly successful, extraordinary. I know that because my father told me. Even my mother concurred. So why hasn’t it happened yet?
When I was born nothing extraordinary happened, at least not that I can remember. I am told that at three years old I narrowly missed a stray bullet, but I don’t remember that either (I was born in a war zone). I do remember cutting open my wrist by accident and bleeding out badly but even then, a bandage and a sling for a few weeks seemed to do the trick. When I was around 8 years old, I fell through the opening of a folding chair and managed to become a human sandwich, albeit one that couldn’t breathe, but my brother found me and I was saved. That, I believe, was my last close brush with death.
Throughout my young adulthood I waited for extraordinary, special, exceptional, to happen but it didn’t. I was a mediocre to good student at best. I was not an athlete, I was of regular height and weight (even a bit on the short and plump side), I read voraciously but despite that, my lit crit was basic, as was my writing. The sciences stumped me. My SAT score was 1250 and even though I acted, danced and played the piano, I was not particularly notable. And so I stopped.
Still, I waited. I refused to budge. I did not take risks lest Extra-O miss me. I refused criticism lest Extra-O dismiss me, I refused to fail and learn lest Extra-O deem me unworthy. I wrote a blog and counted my readers daily. I turned it into a book and was offended when agents rejected me. Did they not get the memo? Didn’t anyone tell them I was destined for special, exceptional, wildly successful? In my forties I wrote a second book and was so eager for it to be a bestseller that I did not even dare submit it to agents.
It is easier to be exceptional than ordinary. Being exceptional means being at a vantage point, watching as others hustle to come to your edge of the circle. The exceptional space, like first-class, or better yet, private jet, is emptier, more exclusive, roomier. There are less people, more resources. The ordinary life is messy, busy, noisy. And it’s crowded. Choosing extraordinary means not having to do the work, you don’t have to hustle, you don’t have to follow the rules. Rules are for the middle spaces. Who wants to be there? Certainly not me, I am destined for exceptional. My father told me and even my mother concurred. I waited on the edge for Extra-O to find me.
It didn’t. This is what my parents got wrong: it turns out Extra-O doesn’t dwell on the edge of the circle, it stays in the middle. Also, it cannot exist alone. Turns out the edge is empty, lonely, there is not much to see. Quiet. Boring. The middle, the ordinary, is where the action is! It’s where everyone else is. Where the fun is happening — the laughter, the tears, the love, the frustration, the meaning.
As I waited for Extra-O to find me on the edge, it was looking for me in the middle. All I had to do was move toward the centre, make noise, hustle. You do not choose extraordinary and neither do your parents it turns out. Extraordinary chooses you. All you have to do is show up, be ordinary.
Scary? Yes. Necessary? Also yes.
Marcus Aurelius wrote “When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it, why […] do you look for a third thing on top — credit for the good deed or a favor in return?”
I am slowly relinquishing my search for “the third thing”: the acknowledgment, the recognition for being better or being different. I simply show up. I am in the same space as Extra-O. We may bump into each other and we may not. But I am no longer waiting.
As a university admissions counsellor, I work with many students who believe that they are destined for greatness and the exceptional. They want to go to the top schools, the ones that admit only a tiny margin of the population. They want to get extraordinary jobs and live extraordinary lives. They want to do exceptional things — in the future. Some are truly middlemen and women and some are waiting for Extra-O to find them, like I was. I nudge them gently towards the middle. It is happy in the middle.