MEDIOCRITY

February 15, 2005

All shall be well. This has been my slogan since I begin to understand that life doesn’t always go the way we plan it to. Eversince I accept the way of life I have now, I experience nothing but trouble. First, there is this restlessness that always plague me. I seem to always think that all I do is not enough, that there is always something MORE. I may blame it all on the Jesuit educational system that influences my way of life but I seem to remember that ever since childhood, I’ve never believed in mediocrity. I am always confident that someday I can do something for the world. Something extraordinary. Something wonderful. Something More. In all the things I do I have always strived for beauty and originality. I used to equate my work then with what I am. But gradually, as I find God and falls in love with Him, my work began to take on new meaning. I am full of awe at what this love can do. At the same time, I am afraid of what this love can make me do. And so I find myself loving people because it is asked of me. Somehow, my heart recognizes that the only way I’ll find myself is in getting out of myself. For years I have been preoccupied with who I am and what I am. Yet when I begin to love people, I see how easy it is for me to appreciate myself. All I need is to dare to love and love truly without recompense. And it’s like a petal unfolding itself. Then I begin to see that when I learn to truly love, there is no place for mediocrity. One cannot be mediocre when one is in love.

Then why this restlessness? I believe it is because loving does not stop with the people I loved first. It is not exclusive nor stagnant. The true test of loving lies in being able to let go. Even if I feel my soul torn apart, my heart broken to a hundred pieces, my body tired and my arms too weary to embrace another broken soul. Love is truly love when time and distance do not become a reason for forgetting but a reason for looking forward to the next meeting. The challenge then is to love more, to find people to love, to be restlessly in love.

But I find it hard to love sometimes. Right now I am beginning to think twice about restlessness. As I said, it brings me nothing but trouble. Because the world doesn’t see love the way I do. Because the people I dare to love do not know that I am loving them with all that I have. Because the world has placed limits on who I can love, until when, which places, and for what reasons. For this, I am frustrated to the point of tears. I begin to think about mediocrity. Is there such a thing about being good at mediocrity? I see so many people being content with what is there. They no longer feel the need to love more because they have people to love who love them back. I envy the peace they seem to show the world. Why cannot I love the same way? Why can’t I just love those who love me? Why must I search the earth for more people to love? Why must I always dare to love to be more?

If I give in to mediocrity, must I also forget my dreams? Then I will be merely existing and not living. I am merely functioning as a body and forgetting all about my soul. I will cease to love because I am tired of restlessness. It only leaves me with a hundred broken pieces that I don’t know how to patch or even mend. I will no longer fulfill my destiny. There is no More. Nothing wonderful. Nothing extraordinary. I will just exist and wait for end without excitement or fear.

Yet this feeling, though tempting and an easy escape to a hassle-free life, is fortunately fleeting. I am selfish because I love myself too much to die without a struggle, to die without having to fight for my dreams, to die without having known the pleasure of being loved and the pain of being rejected, to die without the excitement of the dare, and to die even without the restless spirit that has moved me to be MORE. After the entire struggle, I still know that all shall be well.