Being average

If you asked me what I was afraid of, I would say 'Many things' and I would not be lying. There are really many things that I am afraid of.. Butterflies, ghosts, darkness, loneliness, losing my loved ones... many things..


But there is this one thing that I have been terrified of ever since I was a little kid. It might have something to do with the way my mother pushed me to the limits to excel in studies and top the class, which never happened. I remember waking up at 4 am in the morning as a little seven year old and being grilled on the capitals of countries around the world. A slap greeted me every time I got it wrong, a splash of water everytime I dozed off to sleep. Thinking back I realise how harsh it was, but as fellow Indian kids would understand, slaps and scoldings are the way of life for the children..


Anyway, the day report cards would be distributed would always be one of the most dreaded days of my life, second only to dentist visits and vaccination days. No matter how hard I worked, or rather how hard I was made to work I would always come a fourth, a fifth or even an eight. The first three spots would elude me to the fury of my mother. 

(Picture from the Internet)

Years went by and it would always be the same story. In 2000 I left my small town for a new chapter-the Welham one. Even here, there was a sense of mediocrity I felt in me, for I could never get an 80%. Life seemed to have been permanently resigned to a 70% and even a cruel 79%. I say cruel for it made the 80% so close and yet I could never reach it..Now decades later, I am in Manchester and yet it feels like it is the same old story. Even here, it is only once a while that I touch a 74 or a 75. 


Of all the things I am scared of, Mediocrity is one of my greatest fears. I still have not resigned my fate to being an average person, a 70 percenter in school and a 60 percenter here. 


I still want to believe I am made for better things. I still want to believe there is something out there I can be better than everyone else is. It is hard sometimes, to raise my head above this averageness and think I am good enough. It is hard sometimes to feel good about myself when I know far less than most people. It is even harder when I see people around me strive so hard and be so focused when I have the concentration span of my goldfish. 


It is at these times that I look at the picture of my parents, my grandmother and friends so far away from where I am, and I remember their sacrifices and faith in me. How could I possibly disappoint. 


It is their belief in me that makes me fight this mediocrity. I know I am not as good as many people out there, I know I am not talented enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough among many other things.. But I also know, if I keep going at where I am now, I can make the graph of my life a consistently ascending one, not one that plummets into the deep depths of dreariness. 
This is what keeps me going, despite of my 'averageness'..