World Worships Mediocrity

 Leaning Tower of Pisa 

Famous for its structural

defect. 

Recently I set my Facebook profile favorite quote to "World worships mediocrity", I am not sure who first said,who it can attributed to,if any one does please let me know. Now if the statement sounds snobbish,read again! The word is mediocrity not mediocre, its about attitude not people. And the quote is intended to be part of a self-prescribed therapy.  The malaise I diagnosed myself with is the inability to complete tasks, any task.

Its an attitudional problem  I have been grappling with all my adult life. It is not just procrastination and laziness but also the fact that I am not satisfied with the outcome. Am I a perfectionist ? This thought never occurred to me before,but more importantly I have never been referred to as such. But then I have never achieved any success,radical enough and/or little cranky to be considered that.

It is recently that I came to identify the conceptual trap I had failed to see before. It is the simple fact that perfection is unattainable. The very concept of perfection is  subjective,we ourselves define the boundaries or in a manner confine our expectation to what we perceive possible. Perfection per se is an abstract notion, lying in realms of spiritualism and philosophy, worldly  perfection is simply setting higher expectations than one's peers but in no case can it be called highest expectation.

Perfection as a concept is thus relative,but more importantly it is the completion that matters.An idea in someone's head,even if a brilliant one, has absolutely no value for others unless it is executed into something tangible. If striving for perfection prevents one from completing something, the question of success or failure doesn't arise. At any given time a mediocre result is infinitely more desirable than a brilliant but incomplete result,which actually qualifies to no result.

 Of course,there are always a small band of people who push their limit of expection to a higher level,often beyond the sight of common people. Throught history there must have been a lot of these 'visionaries' who failed and passed to obscurity but there are some who succeeded and are remembered today as giants who gave the world the push it requires to move ahead but only intermittently.After all how many Da Vincis,Einsteins, Newtons and Edisons have there been? There are always lesser giants of course but even they constitute a minuscule segment of the total population. It is the imperfect,blundering and at times unappreciated human,who keeps the world moving by.   No wonder the world worships mediocrity, it is mediocrity that runs it.

PS: This should have been published on 01-01-2012 but it was incomplete then. It is incomplete now too ;)