Is it the Murder “of” Mediocrity? Or is it the Murder “by” Mediocrity? Is Mediocrity being killed, …… or is Mediocrity killing that special uniqueness of who we are? I couldn’t decide? I just love the idea of profiling and figuring the habit machines of the criminal. This criminal’s habit machine always kills on a Tuesday after the full moon. Why? What triggers that? How was this machine developed? The victim is always killed in a certain way and the body posed in special meaningful ways: hands crossed with a bow tie, …. or in a fetal position, naked and exposed, or ….. What does this mean to the habitual creature?
These are clues of who this person is and what this creature of habit will do next. Habit machines are just like that, they do what they do, they can’t help it. It’s just who they are. Hey, what you do next may be a surprise to you, but not to your friends and family. You can’t help it, you’re a creature of habit, a habit machine.
So back to my confusion: should I profile how Mediocrity Murders our Specialness or should I profile how our Specialness Murders our Mediocrity? Kids are always trying to grow up too soon. Parents say, “Enjoy being a kid, you’ll grow up soon enough.” …. But kids hate being called babies and not being old enough to do all that grown up stuff. They want to grow up Now! They want to stop missing out on all those grown up things. The kids want to Murder their babyness and evolve into a grown up, Now! There is no confusion. At least not until they actually do grow up and then, some start to wish they were young again and take this growing up a little slower.
For perspective, do you think you are you special? Do you claim that specialness, like my niece. She was jumping and doing some wild and crazy agilities. She was showing off! I applauded with all I was worth! Then I challenged her to an even more death defying feat. She looked me square in the eyes and balanced on her tiptoes and flew through the air ……. more air …… to land. She landed a little struggled, but undaunted, to arise with a smile, hands lifting the sky! WOW! She was special!
Is that how it is for you? Me, it is not quite like that. Reality states point blank to me, “No, you aren’t anything special. Anybody can do that! I mean you must be in Kindergarten, or something, to think that is anything special. That is so ordinary. It is boringly below obnoxious ordinary.” ……. WOW, how accurate and truthful, I thought. I am a newbie, a bumbling beginner. I’m nothing special at all. I’m boringly below obnoxious ordinary. It’s hard to accept, but it’s true. I’m just not special.
I think I’ve found where to start: Murder of My Specialness by Mediocrity? I need to profile this Mediocrity guy who has killed my Specialness. I mean I was confused, but I kept hearing my wife’s sister in my mind talk to the kids. She’d pose a controversial question that could get them in trouble, pauses,... then follows it up with: “Don’t look at me confused. You know what you’re thinking. Stand up and spit it out!” This was an order, it was not a request! And she has this magic power of being able to tell if you’re lying. So they tell her! No being confused. …. She doesn’t let you slip into the warm and comfy confused state. “Stand up! … now let’s hear it!”
Confusion is the first bullet fired by Mediocrity. Are you special? ….. Uhhhh. How? ….. Uhhhh. Stand up and spit it out! …. Uhhhh. No, (I’m confused), how do I know what is special? Is this special? How about this? I know this is, but I can’t do that? I don’t know. How would you know anyway? Mediocrity, then proceeds to confuse you more by comparing whatever you come up with, like it is ordinary toe jam. Nothing special at all! …. Just more boring!
“Are you special?” Mediocrity trains with confusion and doubt and the first bullet hits the mark. You are not special, …. And the person starts to bleed out any specialness they might have had: Special? >>> “Oh, not really, I do ok, I just do the best I can, but nothing really special. What is life about? … nothing special. Why am I here? Oh, I don’t know, … is it important? I’m a little confused.”
But, if the person holds stupidly solid to some specialness, Mediocre, shoots the bullet of argue. Mediocrity argues with the person and distract him from his practice. He argues and trains the person to becomes an angry arguer, never developing their specialness. They are just a good arguer. …. the lack of progress starts to feed into doubt and the bleeding continues.
How was your day? Oh, same old, same old thing. Anything special? No, nothing special. It was very uneventful, ordinary. …… and the Murder is almost complete. The person is almost dead. But wait, the person starts to train and develop something new. A new sport, a new hobby, a latent interest and the bleeding slows down. The person’s pulse is weak, but there is life. They develop a dancing interest, a cooking interest, a business interest, a new family interest, ……. and the blip, blip, blip on the special monitor screen, …. screams with hope.
Mediocrity, uncaringly, shoots the bullets of difficulty. You’re just a beginner, it will take forever to be good, let alone really good. Your chance of great is almost impossible. Ignore your little happy hope and do something important. You’ve got to do serious stuff. I mean just to make it and be average, you have to get a job and pay your ordinary bills. You are not special. Face it, you just aren’t. This little kindergarten thing, is pretty weak. You can’t really be serious? You're not that desperate, are you? Come on, …. be happy. Be yourself and accept yourself as an ordinary person. Specialness is only for a few.
The bleeding starts up again, as interest is lost and the habit machine is trained or being built without any specialness machine. Where are those parental applauds, don’t they count anymore. Your friends insist you are something special, but the hollowness resounds as they treat you like such an ordinary person.
You can almost hear the young crying out in despair as their specialness bleeds out. Their Specialness machine is dying. The blood loss is unceasing. You can feel the desperate youth wanting an end to the suffering of not being special. How had this happened? Why don’t I have a Specialness machine? This just doesn’t seem fair! Why was I left out?
Is there even a chance for the Specialness machine? Will Mediocrity be caught before he has finished off this victim? So many victims have gone before and sacrificed themselves as clues to help us. Where do they lead us? The profile is Clear. He targets his victims everyday. He shoots the bullets of confusion. The bullets explode the ordinary mediocrity of the person. He follows it with the bullets of argument and distraction, challenging the slightest helpless hope that there is anything special in this person. Mediocrity then fires the kill shot by pontificating the difficulty, ….. the horrible hardness, ….. the frightening foreverness of the suffering struggle to ever really be good. 10,000 hours! Ten years! I can’t do it! I can’t believe that long! It’s almost always lethal. Mediocrity then patiently poses the victim as a good boy or girl grinding the gears of societies’ beckoning. It’s the profile of the Murdering Mediocrity, a serial Killer!
But what of the few that are able to survive and Murder this tyrannical Mediocrity? What is the profile of the Specialness that Murders Mediocrity? Could we find a profile of a habit machine, a creature of habit that has eliminated, killed Mediocrity? What if you had a Specialness machine, like the kids’ “Be a Grownup” machine? The kids machine killed any aspects of their Babyness. They found all attributes of Babyness and made rules to never engage: Never let Mom hug or kiss me in public. Standing tall and acting like a grown up, even when they have no idea what they are doing?
What if your Specialness machine refused to have mediocre thoughts, feelings and actions. What if your Specialness machine just knew you were special and it was just guessing until it openly exposed your specialness: To claim something “special”, just because you said so, not them. Special to you alone, not according to the holy grail of Mediocrity. What if you weren’t ever trained in their superficial fad specialness, but instead you were trained to look into your own soul and decide! It was up to you and you had to decide! “Stand up! Spit it out!” Then right now, you would be my niece deciding her dance and fly through the air off the stairs was the “Bees-Knees”, the coolest thing alive! Special! She didn’t care what others thought or what the holy grail truth was or what anybody or anything thought. For her, she was alive as the most important thing ever. She was special and she had decided it!
She didn’t care. …. And she practiced and practiced and practice and loved every minute. That’s just what she does. She doesn’t argue with me, she looks me in the eye, calculates, figures and goes for it. I’m getting tired, and she doesn’t put up with distractions. She wrestles my attention as I squirm to get away for a cup of coffee. Go drink your coffee, as she flies through the air. She has no time for coffee, food or …. Well, maybe pumpkin pie, as we take a brief break, then back to being alive. For her it is special! Is it ordinary, what other kids do? She doesn’t care! What a machine to have: a “special to me” machine! I don’t care what you say! … and into the air! It’s like the bullet proof vest for Mediocrities’ bullets.
The super successful special people seem to all have a story of struggle. But we don’t pay too much attention to their struggle, because of course they were super special and could easily deal with the struggle. They weren’t some ordinary mediocre person like me who couldn’t deal with this forever struggle. They were superhumans. Me, I have this mediocrity machine attached. I’m not special. I don’t even have a special machine to murder my mediocrity machine. I mean to develop this “Hang In There Forever” machine, I’d be starting at the kindergarten level. I have been hit with the lethal bullet. Who could ever be so far below ordinary for that long and and still make it out alive.
Kids, in short bursts, play and pretend to be adults. Then they are back to being kids. They are kindergarten adults. It’s how kids do it. It’s how they make it, slowly murdering their babyness. Great coaches, catch their players being and doing little things that are champion-like and for that brief moment they are special champions. The players are practicing, training and catching glimpses of their special champion inside themselves. It is little moments of aliveness and play. They don’t get all serious about the inbetween. Kid play, pretend, practice and have fun little visions of their special adultness.
Maybe these struggling superhumans, didn’t start out as superhumans. Maybe they just were special in brief glimmers. They didn’t make it such a big deal of all their failures and flops. They just relished in the few rare moments where they glimpsed at their specialness. And just kept going, until one day they were there! Special indeed even by the holy grail of mediocrity.
Hey, profiling gives us an approach to see repetitive machine actions that describe the person and let us predict their actions or behavior. Their habit machine does what it does, it is a creature of habit. The building, growth or change of this machine might be triggered or trained by other events. This guy lost his child and the police gave up, so he took it into his own hands. … what’s going to trigger you, to take it into your own hands, the Murdering of your Mediocrity to let your Specialness live?
We’ve profiled the Murdering of our Specialness by Mediocrity. But look for yourself and profile for yourself, from what you’ve seen or experienced. We’ve all seen it when our friends or family members had so much potential, but they ended up not doing much with it. They end up with a mediocre jobs grinding the gears of society. How does a very special person with a lot of potential, get their specialness Murdered by Mediocrity? Look at a few examples and profile their killer. How was their Specialness Murdered? Profile the killer! What did the killer do?
We also know of people who did something with their Specialness. Who are they? Pick one person and look, investigate: Can we profile them, their habit machines? These creatures of habit, what did they do to avoid being Murdered and actually Murder Mediocrity? Profile them, who are they? What habit machines do these creatures have that make them bullet proof to Mediocrities’ bullets? ….. then end it. May Mediocrity rest in peace, forever! Be Special!
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