Marinating in Mediocrity

Achieve your fullest potential and 200 other jokes you can tell yourself when you feel low - Arnold Schwarzenegger

I think people have started to recognize me, not in the celebrity-like sense where I am spotted while getting myself a waffle on the street or something, but in the more real sense where my next move for anything has become easy to predict, leaving me with little to no room for surprises.

I don't think I am particularly fond of this notion. Why must people know me? Why must people have the misconception that they truly know me? All along, I believed that the better part of me was a mystery to the world, and let's hope that remains true. But to the naive naked eye, the belief stands that I have now been understood, accepted, explored, and judged by the entirety of the world, leaving nothing more astonishing about me. 

I just like you have dealt with different kinds of frustrations with different expiration dates, all my life. Whether it was the frustration of having stuck in a space of sorrow that you never think you could emerge out of or the frustration of being misunderstood and uncomprehended for the larger part of your life. 

But the trump card of frustration here is truly believing that you as an individual are capable of far more than where you stand now but that there is nothing you can do about it. This kind of frustration doesn’t occur as a passing thought that can be overridden by downing a bucket of ice cream or getting lost in the kaleidoscopic world of psychedelics.  

This agony is recurring and is present after every conscious thought that you have. It punctuates but the very sentences that you are struggling to form right now, it punches you in the gut when you’ve missed the most obvious answer to the question. It’s the doubt that emerges everytime you make a tiny mistake that brings your entire existence into an interrogation. It’s the dread that follows after the question -  Is this all there is left to me?

This adversary of yours fervently scratches against your insides and roars loudly, demanding to be set free, but you just don't know how, and you helplessly look around for answers, for a hint, anything that could tame it. You feel the pit in your stomach growing larger, the scratches becoming more painful, screaming, 'LET ME OUT!' And yet, you stand there hopelessly, not knowing how to.

My report cards since the 3rd grade have all said the same thing, “she is good but she has potential to do better”, and “There is room for improvement, she definitely has the potential”. And all this while that word was nothing more than a term in the Oxford dictionary to me, and I remember asking myself, “Then where is all this potential going? Is it doubling within me like a fixed deposit, or is it slowly depleting like the Forex reserves? Does it evaporate into a mist or does it flush itself out from the back end? 

It is only recently that I discovered, that it’s all of the above and more. It is an unending urge to JUST DO SOMETHING! Something more than what you have already done, something slightly extraordinary, something better than the mediocrity that you have been marinating yourself in. It’s that one opportunity you get to widen the eyes and create the most important statement of all - maybe there is something more to her. 

Until that day when I unleash my potential or at least till the day I am tired of waiting for the day that will unleash my potential, I will perhaps turn another page, write another blog, trek another mountain, or just stay up late for a single night. We’ll never know but till then, I’ll have to be okay with people recognizing me, preferably when I am out buying a waffle.  (I’ll make myself feel better by thinking I am Julia Roberts). 

See you until next time!