Show No Promise! Embrace Your Mediocrity
Having difficulties maintaining a consistent career path? Perhaps it doesn’t bother you, but are members of your family always pestering you about your ‘potential’? Few people are born with this genetic malady, but akin with the hysterical sightings of symptoms of the disease of the month, (it’s still bird flu right?), family members often misconstrue certain basic acts of human ability as potential. It’s a projected hypochondria of talent.
Are you a baby getting all the shapes in the corresponding hole? You are bound for the Ivy Leagues! Kicking a football and it then goes to the place where you intended to kick it and you don’t then fall on your face because you’re a toddler? The next Pelé is in our midst! When you were a teenager did you made the mistake of getting a few good grades in the years before discovering marijuana and peer pressure? You can be CEO of everything. You see, if you do well, or are perceived to do well at any point as a young person, it gives the various members of your family hope.
Hope is another emotional virus that attacks the cognitive, stupidity and bullshit areas of our ‘systems.’ Hope is a cartoon dotted line of implied invisibility that separates people from having to deal with actual reality. They will never let that shit go. ‘Finally!’ They will cry in unison. ‘Someone in the family who isn’t going to have an overly intimate relationship with social services in some capacity or another,’ they will continue to declare in sync.[pullquote]When you were a teenager did you made the mistake of getting a few good grades in the years before discovering marijuana and peer pressure? You can be CEO of everything.[/pullquote]
Little Jimmy gets a couple of As in the junior certificate, and that shit follows him around for every future achievement (or lack thereof) for the rest of his life. And as he goes on to not meet anyone’s expectations his mother will be there saying: ‘Ah but I remember when you got that A in higher English.’ If Jimmy had only more consistently behaved as the under-achiever he truly was in his heart, he could have avoided a world of familial disappointment and resulting guilt.
I have never been asked to advise young people in any capacity – there have even occasionally been active measures put in place to avoid this occurring – but should the opportunity to do so ever arise, my one piece of advice would be this: show no promise. It’ll only give you grief in the long run. If you are consistent from the start about how little you intend to achieve then anything you actually do manage to pull off will be a pleasant surprise. Whereas, if you showed any promise as a student, as an athlete, or as an anything else people perceive (incorrectly) as useful to society, everything you do after these initial achievements will only light the path of your mediocrity and eventually, to dusty death. Never raise anyone’s hopes and all those opportunities you are ignoring along your path will at least remain dimly lit and no one will even notice, probably.
Don’t forget as well, it is never too late to start! Not with your family: once that pattern is embedded in your youth you will be trapped forever unless you perform some type of endless sunshine of the spotless mind shit on that genetic burden (family).You begin a new position of work with that dutiful and eager attitude of a sycophantic, twitchy rabbit and your responsibilities will only increase from there. Soon enough you’re staying late after work for no extra pay, you’re filling in for hungover colleagues at the last minute, you’re picking up your bosses kids from school, and before you know it you’re massaging Janet the receptionist’s varicose veins as she eats your home-made lunch.[pullquote]Everything you do after these initial achievements will only light the path of your mediocrity and eventually, to your dusty death.[/pullquote]
You have to go in to that job confident, but lazy; intelligent, but clueless. It’s the same strategy used by politicians and they make money off your sense of safety and the water you drink to stay alive. Always make a big deal of anything you actually do achieve. Set the bar low and you will barely have to jump, horsey. Neeeeiiigghhh. Nietzsche refuted Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory by arguing that ‘the weak prevail over the strong – simply because they are the majority’ – exemplified right now by the sheer volume of Trump supporters and wall builders in BrExtopia.
Another area where this attitude can benefit you is in new relationships. When your new significant other asks you to come meet his family for the first time, wear your pajamas and talk about all the different kinds of fungal infections you’ve had over the years. They grow in more than just the toes. People need to know.
In conclusion, show no promise! If you have a talent, suppress it! If you have a passion, do not pursue it! Who needs the hassle of the minor disappointment resulting from the occasional failure when you can hum at a low mediocre frequency forever, gathering strength until you eventually become one of those dickhead middle managers who project their resentment and self loathing onto every person they come into contact with. That, or any member of Fianna Fail.
