Dancing Into Mediocrity

A few months ago, my beautiful bride tricked me into taking ballroom dance classes with her. It was far outside of my comfort zone and even farther from my natural talents. After I had “done my time” with the initial block of classes, I wasn’t super excited about continuing with lessons. My wife then asked, “You don’t want to take more lessons? Don’t you want to be really good?” To which my heartfelt and contemplative response was, “No, not really, I am pretty okay with sub-par in this area of my life.”

My wife was surprised by this response, assuming I like to be good at everything. While that is partially true, it would be fun to be good at everything – and I would also like to be exempt from taxes and have the powers of flight – I know some things just aren’t meant to be. I will likely never win Dancing With the Stars, and I am quite fine with that.

Now before you assume that I’ve resigned myself to a life of remarkable mediocrity (no, that isn’t an oxymoron; people might say with surprise, “Can you believe how average that guy is?!?”), you must know that isn’t the case at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I have learned that because my time, energy, and even interests are limited, if I try to be good at everything, I ensure I will achieve excellence in nothing.

If I chase too many rabbits, I will end up catching precisely none of them. It’s imperative that each of us carefully consider what is vitally important in our lives and invest the best of ourselves wholly and intentionally into those areas that matter most. And we must also learn to be okay with allowing the other facets of our lives getting the leftovers, and thus being mediocre (or worse) in some of those areas. I know I will never be the second coming of Fred Astaire, I hope my wife can accept that.

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