Saturday, April 28, 2012

Let's Inhabit the Average For a Day - no?

For all of you who want to be perfect.  For those who want to excel at . . . everything.  For everyone who checks out their image in the minutest level of reflective material (say, your partner's sunglasses, the stainless steel of elevator doors, car windows, or even chrome embroidery, and of course, almost all windows).  For those who find the need to purchase a new pair of pants, excessive amounts of shirts, ties, socks, underwear, or other accouterments.  For those who find their own exceptionalism perfectly normal and expected, and never question their superiority . . .

Really?  Are you fucking serious, or what?  (I freely admit that this is a somewhat solipsistic self-mediated conversation with a version of a historical self that I loathe in a mild black tea induced froth of Saturday morning (which is to say, not a heavily frenetic mindset (which is also to say that the old self would be much more frothy than the current self if I were forced to converse with the old self)), but I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're always talking to versions of our old (or current) selves, and I wouldn't say that we, as in we individuals, are only mirrors of the exterior social networks, systems, societal whatevers, birds, flutes, trees, and tables, either, because the self exists, and one of the reasons it does exist is because it thinks it is exceptional, and makes distinctions and rationalizes those distinctions).

Still, there must be some capacity that we all maintain to look into the mirror and obtain real live data from the world, and recognize one thing: that most of us are profoundly average. 

The next step is to be happy with that.  Because to be unhappy with that would make us far too average.  And being happy with averageness, in a way, is quite exceptional.

No comments: