She was a follower on Twitter, but as so often happened, she was nobody I knew. So I did some checking and it revealed that her name was Andrea and that she was living on a farm in Alberta, Canada.
In a quick scan of her bio, my eyes locked on these words: “Making mediocrity fabulous one day at a time.” Those words weren’t the ordinary kind that merely talked. They yelled, almost screamed: “Look at us real close. We are expressing something profound, a great thought to live by, an even greater one to wake up to every morning.”
So why hadn’t I thought of that. After all, there have been many days when I certainly could have used that jab in the gut to remind me what this thing called life is really all about.
Days obliging me to do more than I could possibly deliver. Days that began okay only to sink into a morass of confused junk. Days when I, an imagined million-dollar man, didn’t feel like ten cents. Days when logic insisted on calling in sick. Days when the good words I needed to say to somebody not only didn’t come but with a hideous laugh had purposely hid themselves. Days when not even the best coffee tasted good. Days when I longed for a phone call from a friend but the call never came. Days when I felt all dressed up with no place to go. Days that insisted on being Monday even though they weren’t. Days when I felt as if I would be doing everyone a favor, me included, by staying in bed and pulling the covers even tighter over my head.
So you can relate to that, huh? I knew you could.
Andrea, however, wasn’t finished with me yet. I scanned down to a some posts she had made a few days before. One had her mocking the “heat wave” that occurred after the temperature had risen from -35F to -27F. That was closely followed by this: “I have four children under age 10, and it’s too cold to kick them outside and too early to start drinking. Curses.”
That would cause every Mrs. Goodbody in the world to envision a habitually drunken mother telling her kids they had to go outside even if the mercury had scrunched itself right down to the bottom of the thermometer tube.
But not me. Nope. That take on words revealed Andrea’s wry sense of humor, her way of making the most of mediocrity.
That is, you play with it in much the same way as a cat might play with a mouse. Eventually, the mouse gets so tired it stops moving. It just lies there, doomed and waiting for the inevitable. But the cat doesn’t eat the mouse. It never really intended to. After all, why destroy that which had not only provided all the fun of the moment but might provide even more of it later?
As supposedly level-headed human beings, we must keep our wits about us if we are to set a good example for others around us as to how to keep theirs. Anybody trying to figure out which course to follow to not only survive but also to succeed, wants and needs what responsible people, including you, can tell them. In that regard, those whose keyboards have been approved by the Media Police need not apply.
But what if we believe, as does Andrea, that mediocrity can, indeed, be made fabulous? And what if we are confident we can then make it actually happen? And what if we can then transfer that ability to others, maybe even make it an “ah hah!” moment for them?
That’s a thought worth exploring, a challenge worth adopting, an ability worth having. So here’s the deal.
Go no farther in attempting to figure out how you are going to project yourself through the rest of this year. Consider it done if you have read this far. That’s because you have already discovered the Holy Grail of how to perform perfectly.
It reads like this:
Beginning tomorrow and every morning thereafter, as the first bit of consciousness creeps into your existence and before you even open your eyes, utter these words aloud: “Lord, just for today, help me make mediocrity fabulous.”
Do that and come this time next year, there won’t be any need for me to guess what happened.
Somehow and in some way I’ll already know.
