We Must Overcome-Daily Meditation-November 11, 2022

Today’s quotation:

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. . . it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.-Ute Hagen

Today’s Meditation:

In our family, “Weird is good.”  Whenever one of us does something that goes against the norm or that seems to be a bit strange, we tell that person, “You’re so weird!”  And the response is always, “Yeah, and weird is good!”

In this way, we allow ourselves to stray from the normal–and not just to stray from it, but to embrace the abnormal, the different, the unusual.  In the regular things of life, there’s very little–if anything–left to be discovered.  Because so many people strive to be “regular” every day of their lives, they take away the new and the extraordinary from that regular side of life, and they convert it into the boring and the usual.  Mediocrity rules in the regular because the regular doesn’t encourage us to take chances to move in new directions or to try to find the new and extraordinary.

Our whole lives are long, we’re encouraged to be regular by teachers, parents, friends, relatives, and other members of society.  If we’re “regular” kids, we won’t embarrass our parents.  If we’re regularly in the classroom, the teacher won’t face any new or different challenges.

There are times when being regular can be valuable.  My employer would like it if I can maintain a certain degree of regularness in my job.  My step-kids would appreciate it if I’m regular in my financial dealings so that they don’t face serious financial problems in the future.

But regular doesn’t have to rule our lives.  There’s much of the extraordinary out there in the world, and if we’re to find it, then we have to look for it.  And we can’t do that by settling for mediocrity and boring status quos.

Questions to consider:

From where do we get the notion of the value of being regular?

What kinds of new and different things do we discover when we’re focused on conforming to what society sees as “regular”?

What’s the value in settling for mediocrity?

For further thought:

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.-Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you missed yesterday’s Daily Meditation you can read it here.