I guess I've always thought I am average. At everything I do in my life and as a person in general. Or at least I've thought that I'm not exceptional at anything, especially not any one thing. So I've always thought that meant I'm average.
Average intelligence.
Average abilities.
Average human.
Recently, it has been proposed that being average is unacceptable. Like a couple days ago in General Conference:
"There is no room for average or complacent disciples. Average is the enemy of excellence, and average commitment will prevent you from enduring to the end."Hearing that, I nearly gave up right then. If average is the "enemy of excellence," then I must be the lowest sort of scum on the earth. Within the idea of being average, I have believed also that exceptional was out of my reach. This led to thinking that average is all I will ever be and by default enduring to the end isn't even in the range of my possibilities.
At that time, I felt discouraged and so I quit listening. I thought: I'm not enough and how could I ever be? In that attitude, I continued with my day. But Heavenly Father must have been watching. I can only guess that He might have thrown up His arms whilst shaking His head at my condition. Because then I can imagine Him smiling at an idea. And this is what followed.
I found myself with a few rare moments of alone time with my mother, who I found out quickly, felt similarly discouraged to this idea of average. We discussed how our expectations for ourselves are so high that excellence is virtually unattainable and we should probably take it a little easier on ourselves. Especially when hearing direction like above, we should take stock of our situation and attitude but not jump automatically to the conclusion that this message was obviously to let us know how much we are failing. Because we're not. We're really not.
Sharon Palmer is not a woman I would ever label as average. She is a remarkable person - wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, etc. Pianist, vocalist, chorister, speech therapist, teacher, writer, Relief Society president, etc. I mean, she earned her Master's degree while working full-time as a speech therapist and keeping her family going. She's written numerous books - some of them more than once. She taught piano off and on all through my growing up. She's always attended our events - concerts, games, etc. She welcomes anyone into her home - sometimes to stay. There were times when she carried our family. Other times she has been known to drag our family. Basically, she's essential to our family! And, she doesn't seem to do anything by halves. She has wisdom and determination beyond her years and silliness to relate to any age. My mom is an EXCEPTIONAL woman.
So when we started discussing how similarly we felt about our "averageness," I was mildly surprised. But it helped me realize that I wasn't alone in this. It even made sense for it to be my mom who I could relate to entirely on this. In this discussion then, we asked, "What is average? How is that even determined?" For me, this is a crucial point. Since we are advised not to compare, average must be determined on a personal level. We each have within us average and exceptional so we have to discover it for ourselves.
What is my average then?
I feel like I bring more questions to these writings than answers. Because I don't yet have a complete answer to what my average is. But I have realized that I'm doing better than I thought. I know I can still improve. I have exceptional and average moments still but I don't think I'm failing like I'd concluded before. I will also continue to look into averages so that I can understand where my excellence begins.
But for now, I guess the real point of this exposition was to brag on my brilliant mother a bit. And to inform anyone else reading this, with similar feelings of average and excellence, that you are doing much better than you think. I'd go so far as to advise acknowledging your excellence! You are exceptional humans! Give yourself a break because you are doing such good work and enjoying your adventures! As it should be!
I wrote a fantastic comment to this blog entry and it disappeared when I went to publish it. SO now I will try to recreate it knowing this...it could be even more exceptional for the rewrite or it may be blather because I can't get my thoughts to coagulate. Either way, here it is...again.
ReplyDeleteAverage. Who can say what average is? It is such a subjective term. Just as the saying says "One man's trash is another man's treasure," we can say "one man's average is another man's exceptional." I feel what decides whether something or someone is average is the effort behind it/them. Exceptional efforts almost always produce exceptional results. Conversely, lackadaisical efforts will produce lackadaisical results. No one can ask for more than your best. If you can say "I did my best," then you are above average.
Now, we must realize that not everything we do deserves our best. This is where our priorities lie. Those of us who are burned out, who feel that our best is not good enough, may be putting our best efforts into the wrong things. For instance, is winning a video game as important as doing well on a creative project? No. But we will use the same effort for both. Sometimes it's okay to take a hard look at points in our life and be average in some of them. It's up to us to decide for ourselves what they will be. No one has the right to call someone average. Not even when we're talking to ourselves