For some of us, we have heard of the seven virtues and the seven vices. There are two vices that are in abundance in the world today, greed and sloth. The formal can be the cause for the latter in others. When the greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many, submission takes hold among those many. People become complacent to their hard lives, they are apathetic to other people’s suffering because they are selfishly only worrying about their own dread, their own suffering.
Settling for mediocrity, out of failure or those people who have shunned you, is a form of sloth. You are complacent to exist as bland and boring life. You settle for the routine of misery and then vent those pains onto other people. Eventually you will find yourself alone, because those same people have miseries of their own, and selfishly desire to avoid sharing your discomfort. “We have our own problems.” Or we have the classic game of “That’s nothing, let me tell you about my life.” Every person trying to “one up” each other to prove how horrible things are for them, a game of ego pyramid.
There are several words that are thrown around to create this cycle of mediocrity. One word is apathy. In essence, Apathy sounds benign. It doesn’t look like an offensive word. Apathy develops when people turn off the valve to their emotions. Apathetic people no longer care for other people, their feelings, their situations. Apathy is passivity. Instead of feeling for someone’s plight, reaching out giving a helpful hand, you withdraw into yourself, you look the other way. It’s easy, and a lot of people do it, especially considering the many horrible things that we are bombarded with on a regular basis. If you don’t believe me, turn on the News. But apathy leads to a selfish desire to stay safe and never interact with other people.
Complacency is another word that is thrown around. This is different from apathy because instead of turning the valve that allows you to worry about others, you are turning the valve that allows you to care about your own life. It is a form of defeatism. You have given up. You have surrendered to the devil and the devil likes you staying in your little hole, not caring about others or yourself. In complacency, the devil can stay in his chair and laugh at your demise. And you let him.
Mediocrity is the combination of these two words where you settle for what you got and what you can get, and do not push yourself to achieve more. Someone, or many someones, have programmed you to feel nothing and therefore you settle for what you can get. It could be family; it could be friends. For one reason or another, those family and friends have scared you into your current state. Then you bought their lies. Or maybe you are so lazy that you just don’t care and don’t want to. You want to live and die and that’s it. If a meaningless life is all that you want then this article in not for you.
For the others who want more, all of those people are wrong. You are following the vice of sloth. The same way addicts follow their bad behavior; you are following that routine because it is easy, selfish, “do not bother others and they will not bother you.” It doesn’t matter if you work 40 hours or 80 hours a week. Just because you do the manual labor does not mean you are not lazy. The physical burdens are not the driving force to dispel mediocrity as well. You are settling for what you can get and what you can do. You are not challenging yourself; you are allowing the devil to pat your pillow.
The first barrier is to realize that all of those people are wrong. They cannot define you, no matter how many opinion polls and how many prejudices they sling at you like piles of crap. Gossip and rumor will continue to fester; you just need to realize that those “words” have no affect on your destiny.
If you are making excuses, this is the next barrier to break down. Those excuses are the same triggers that brought you there in the first place. They are lies intended to break your hopes and dreams; they are weapons to destroy your desires and the opportunities at a better you. You carry around excuses to justify your recluse behavior to avoid taking charge and staying in mediocrity.
Expectancy also becomes part of this sin of sloth. Family expects you to produce children, acquire a “good” job, achieve something specific that is in league with their desires or their expectations. All of these things are distractions. Having babies does not mean you are breaking mediocrity and achieving something great, contrary to the expectations that anyone may have.
Financial and monetary gains also do not count as a counter to mediocrity. Acquiring more wealth and the “status of economic power” does not count as overpowering mediocrity. If it’s easy and it requires no effort then it is too easy, and therefore a form of mediocrity.
I am not saying that someone who pursues their dream and starts to feel comfortable in their skin is suddenly falling prey to the vice of sloth, or mediocrity. I’m saying that mediocrity is waiting for you if you become complacent and fall trap to doing the same things over and over without a shred of desire, passion or ambition. Eventually you will forget being a human being and become a robot. There are enough robots in the world, break the chains.
The only way to break the chains of mediocrity is first to recognize it. Then you have to do something about it. The simplest techniques is to start small. Break a simple habit. You can always start by asking why? “Why am I doing this?” If the answers sound like excuses then turn away and start again. If the excuses sound like “this is how we do it and that’s that,” this is the devil’s special lie.
Just to throw a monkey wrench into my own logic, doing something contrary to the status quo every single time is also another tripping into mediocrity. Bucking the system again and again is another routine that can set into the mind and cause you to fall trap to mediocrity. The essence of staying passionate is not to stop feeling and thinking about your choices in life, not finding new routines to satisfy your ego or justify your image among other people.
To break these chains, the most radical thing to do is quit jobs or change addresses, to run away from your old ways. It is a difficult choice, a dangerous choice and not recommended for many people. Such radical changes can have devastating effects and affects, so be prepared for them if you make that choice. For most people, it is the simple things that need to be fussed about, changing attitudes and behaviors, figuratively knocking your head against the wall.
We all need to be kicked in the buttocks on occasion to wake us up. We become complacent to our lives; we stop caring about anything else except the next program on TV. We need to shake ourselves out of this mediocrity and find a passionate direction, a revival of energy that can bring us closer to our dreams.
No one can achieve this goal except you. No one is going to come rushing to your side to help you through it. Very few will encourage you; they are a rare breed. If you haven’t been paying attention, most people are too selfish and egotistical to care about others, so you are going to have to pull yourself up from your boots.
People who achieve awesome goals, great music, beautiful art and fantastic inventions, most of the time, bucked the system, challenged others and themselves, and veered from the status quo. I won’t lie; it does hurt. Galileo is an immediate person that comes to mind, he suffered the consequences for challenging the general perception of the universe. But the overall long-term effects can benefit society and the affects can inspire others. What do you have to lose, other than missing another year’s of rehashed TV programs? I dare you to veer off the road and take a look around at your life.
