The king of Mediocrity
When I was a little boy, my grandmother has told me, I once overheard someone talking about a famous poet on the radio and I said to her "Grandma, one day I too will be as famous as he."
Last year in December, I signed up for a couple of subscriptions - the New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Reading these magazines have given me a tremendous amount of pleasure. However, as I read these articles about some of the great men and women, the writers and poets, the painters and diplomats, translators, judges, musicians, I am often overcome with a mixed sense of melancholy, admiration, and jealosy as I realize that I am not going to achieve even a fraction of what these people, through either innate gifts, hard work or most likely a combination of both, have done.
I vividly recall a scene in the movie "Amadeus" where Salieri is wheeled through the insane asylem screaming "I am the king of mediocrity".
Last year in December, I signed up for a couple of subscriptions - the New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Reading these magazines have given me a tremendous amount of pleasure. However, as I read these articles about some of the great men and women, the writers and poets, the painters and diplomats, translators, judges, musicians, I am often overcome with a mixed sense of melancholy, admiration, and jealosy as I realize that I am not going to achieve even a fraction of what these people, through either innate gifts, hard work or most likely a combination of both, have done.
I vividly recall a scene in the movie "Amadeus" where Salieri is wheeled through the insane asylem screaming "I am the king of mediocrity".
posted by e-kvetcher at 4:23 PM
4 Comments:
I guess it depends on your goal and how you define achievement. For many, achievement isn't about being famous, or published. And many famous people whose works have impacted us immeasurably didn't actually live to see it. I think you have a few good years yet before you hang up your hat.
Thanks for the kind words of encouragement. You are a very positive person, which is one of the reasons why I like reading your blog.
Mediocrity, and not excellence, is the strength of humanity. It's those who have excelled who have been the cause of the greatest evils, devising or enacting a thousand forms of totalitarian utopias that have repeatedly brought us all to the brink of total devastation.
Actually, the truth is that excellence itself is merely another form of mediocrity, and perhaps the most severe form of mediocrity that exists. For a person cannot excel at everything. When one becomes an excellent pianist, for example, one has to give up time to do so--meaning one diminishes one's capacity to be an excellent astrophysicist, triathlete, or father. The more one excels at one thing the less one can at another. Excellence makes one more lopsided, and ultimately, more mediocre than those who manage to be satisfied with being well-balanced, and well-rounded individuals.
Thank G-d for mediocrity.
It's those who have excelled who have been the cause of the greatest evils, devising or enacting a thousand forms of totalitarian utopias that have repeatedly brought us all to the brink of total devastation.
I guess I am thinking of people like Rambam and Rashi, Mozart and Bach, Nabokov and Kipling...
I agree with you in a sense that in many ways these people led lives of misery and had lots of shortcomings
but their genius, when one is privileged to perceive it, is sublime!
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