How Can I Stop Being Average?

When you're a kid, you don't want to be average. Average seems like a spiritual death.

You watch TV shows about extraordinary people, not average people. Children's shows are about superheroes, about adventure, about anything but being average.

In these shows, average people are suckers, a punchline, they're also-rans. That, or they're ordinary people about to embark on a journey of discovery to escape their average life. One way or another, everyone is escaping average, not embracing it.

To the youthful, average has meant failure. And you can't blame them for thinking it. Average is the beige teachers telling them not to run in the school corridors, average is the downtrodden shop assistants they interact with when buying sweets, average is the boring old man who lives 3 doors down and wears brown slacks to go to the shops.

Average is the enemy. Average is bad.

No one in life starts off wanting to be average. And that's a real problem because, by definition, most of us will become average. That's why it's called average. Most peope are it.

This is becuase things change with adulthood. As a young adult, say 25-years-old, you begin to hanker after average. Suddenly average takes on a new meaning, it no longer means boring, it means keeping up with your peer group in terms of salary, house ownership, and career. Everyone starts playing the status game and believe you me, average becomes something good. You want to keep up with the pack.

Sure, you still want to be extraordinary, but as you slowly realise you're never going to be a superhero, and adventure is never going to whisk you away from your responsibilities, extraordinary becomes something different, something more shallow. An extraordinary adult life is measured by wealth and popularity; it's measured by clubs, parties, private jets, mansions, penthouse hotel rooms, exotic holidays, jet skis, sexy women, even sexier bank accounts, and for some reason, watches (as if this is some sort of answer to something).

You might not want that life, or even be impressed by it, but like it or not, people who live this life (Dan Balzarian being the ultimate archetype) are extraordinary. That is, they are extra-ordinary, they are outside the norm, they are anything but average.

You are average, they are not. They are the twenty-something superhero. The thirty-something adventurer. You are a bloke who works in a bank, or whatever.

By your forties, you have to accept you're never going to be a lot of the things you hoped. This isn't depressing as such, it's part of personal growth, letting go of the extended adolescence of the first adulthood and entering into true grown-up territory.

Growing into a healthy adult is about embracing middle-age and reality with stoic realism.

This does, however, to the young outsider, look like giving up.

2020 and all that Lockdown

I used to look at fat, balding, old men in crazy clothes who shuffle around the supermarket and think "That will never be me" and by all accounts, it isn't. I'm too active and too vain to allow such a metamorphosis to take place.

But in 202, along came the pandemic, the great leveller, the global lockdown.

Suddenly, the veneer of "not average" wore off. Did you see Elton John in his house singing I'm Still Standing into s steady-cam? He looked like a pub singer. And his performance was, by all accounts, pretty weak. "Bi still banding" he wailed, off note in a sort of astroturfed gardem area (or something, I couldn't work it out).

That was Elton fucking John. He's a superstar. Not then he wasn't. He looked like a Youtuber.

Sure, he sat in a bigger house than you or me, but so what, he was just another guy with an internet connection, plundering Netflix in his pyjamas. No gigs, no crowds, no adoring fans, just half a season of Squid Games left to watch.

Oh. Take away the superficial glamour and all these cleebrities are just as average as we are. And is that so bad?

The question "How can I stop being average" might not be the right question. Because we are all average in our own ways. Look, anyone can be "not average" if they want it that bad. Go get a heroin dependency or shoot up a school (please don't, but the point is here, many average boys do this in America to be someone, to escape average, to be significant).

Jim Carrey famously said,

"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it's not the answer." - Jim Carrey

We chase the extraordinary, and we run from average, but average is real, it's authentic, it's peace. Glamour, fame, money, these things will not satisfy your soul. We all know this, but we still all want to see for ourselves.

The lockdowns made us all average and was it so bad? Or did it reveal a bigger truth about the paper tiger of fame and fortune?

We're all desperate to be remembered, to be relevsnt, to be immortalised through art and deeds, but being worshipped won't improve your life. As Tony Robbins noted,

"The quality of life is the quality of your relationships"  -  Tony Robbins

Without real friendships, real family, real love, nothing else matters. You can't hug a house. but you can be miserable and lonely in it's opulance.

They say the best things in life are free for a reason. Sunlight, water, nature, relationships, exercise, stretching, time. These are all gifts. Average, run-of-the-mill gifts of life.

Are they so bad? Is average so bad? Hardly. Maybe it's time we embraced average and found peace.