February 20, 2021

The inevitable mediocrity of life

I turned 53 yesterday. (Thank you for your wishes). Unfortunately for you, this minor milestone has put me in the dangerous mood of doling out life advice. Aging is a fascinating phenomenon. With time, our willingness to apply cognitive energy and update worldviews declines and yet our energy to be “helpful” steadily rises. There’s an implicit assumption each of us makes, that goes, ‘Since I’ve lived to be X > N years of age, I must have seen all there is to the world and now must begin disseminating wisdom.’ Keep that in mind as you read on.

The life arc of a standard edition human being can be summed up simply as a matrix of life-stages and polarity. By this, I mean that we go through various life stages, and in each stage we gravitate towards a certain disposition. The life stages are childhood (0-12 years), adolescence (13-17), young adulthood(18-29), adulthood (30-60) and the post-60 adulthood. The polarities are positive and negative.

Childhood (0-12 years)

All of us always start with a positive polarity in life when we are born, no matter what our karmic baggage is. Every birth is a chance at redemption, and Mother Nature is anxious to give us the best start possible. There are no such things as evil babies.

If polarity stays positive, here’s what we do: Play, explore, learn life-positive attitudes (eg delaying gratification, pacifying oneself, etc) and get set up for positive polarity through to the next stage.

If things go bad early, the polarity turns negative. We endure abuse and develop anxiety and fearful attitudes. Our development is arrested and we develop unstable tendencies that derail our ability to function, a lifelong PTSD that sets us up for a downward spiral. This is no fault of the child’s and yet it is the way it is.

Adolescence (13-17 years)

In the positive version: We learn to trust, make friends, build our first social network, develop basic skills and learn to self-regulate (emotions, attitudes, etc.).

In the dark version: The PTSD of childhood continues. Or, there is new abuse. We get alienated, develop distrust, isolate ourselves, latch on to coping mechanisms and the downward spiral continues.

Young adulthood (18-29 years)

In the positive version: For the first time, we develop a relationship with ourselves. “I’m not a kid anymore. I got this.” We learn who to trust, and navigate the path between optimism and cynicism. We learn the value of values like kindness, honesty and empathy by noticing what happens in their absence.

In the negative version: We lose sight of ourselves. We become “clueless” and confused in a bad way, and vulnerable to manipulation. We become egotistically attached to versions of ourselves that place a disproportionate premium on our skills and talents.

Most of us dip into the negative side at this stage in life. This is to a large extent the fault of the world. The world doesn’t value blandness. It encourages us to stake out unique brands and identities by dangling rewards in front of us. You can’t be just another kid anymore. You need to be a math whiz or a debater or a tik-toker. College applications are all about “what makes you special.” They are never about “How lost do you think you are” or “how do you really feel about the way things have gone so far” or “Tell us how we can help you.” The possibility of developing a relationship with ourselves is quickly snuffed out by burgeoning pressures, demands on our time, survival instincts, and the Pavlovian learning from the world experimenting on us. We acquire and juggle labels, anxious to not drop any of them.

Adulthood (30-70 years)

30-45 years of age

If all is going well, it is here we start getting worldly, picking our battles, choosing our foes, tracking our win-loss ratios, and collecting scars. If the polarity stays negative, we fail to launch. We continually optimize starting points, rationalize delays, and get stuck in waiting rooms. Resentment gradually builds up, we dig in and put up shields.

46-60 years of age

Here we begin to make peace with the past, decide who or what we want to forgive and forget, or not. We begin examining our scars to decipher what keys the universe has handed to us and what locks they open. The process of self-discovery begins here.

In the negative version, we put ourselves in the penalty box, from which we don’t expect to ever escape. Our physical, mental and other problems define us. “This is who I am. This is who I will ever be. I can’t and won’t do much about it,” sets in.

Beyond 60 years of age

I don’t know much about what happens from here on, but I can guess. Here we figure out how to play the game of life in the most mature form we possibly can. We step aside. We beat a retreat and cede agency to younger people. We begin to see the possibility of a personal greatness that no longer ties itself to the external world.

In the dark version, we fail to see the future and who it belongs to. We hold on to our fears and to identity and agency for as long as we breathe. We age gracelessly, end up wearing out our welcomes, and get in young people’s ways. We fail to pass on the batons. We fight ourselves and others till the bitter end. We descend to the lowest levels of our frailties before the lights go out.

Note: This is the McDonalds menu version of the life arc. It’s the standard, cookie cutter version; the narrative of a normal life. It’s not to be taken as “this is how life must be lived or not.” There’s obviously more to life than what this simplistic summary captures.

A couple of things stand out.

One is the yin-yang-ness to things. Or, the matter-spirit principle, as the ancient Indian mystics called it. Life essentially comes down to choosing between positive and negative polarities at each stage. A life lived entirely within the positive column isn’t necessarily a good one. A straight As student aiming for a 4.0 in life sets herself up for a different kind of failure. The cost of wandering to the dark side shouldn’t be perceived as failing at life or likely to fail at life. Our life stages are largely in one column in any given stage, and they dip back and forth as we move through them. The goal isn’t to entirely avoid the spirals but to learn that spirals, up or down, are fundamentally unsustainable. And if we stay anywhere for too long, we lose the option to switch. The movie cliches about alcoholics, drug addicts, manic wall street brokers, scheming lawyers, and hard nosed businessmen are all unfortunately true.

The second is that life is largely ordinary and mediocre, for nearly all of us for most of our lives. This isn’t necessarily cause for angst. It takes a while before we realize that we were always reaching for mediocrity from the start. Whether our goals were to climb the corporate ladder, or accumulate wealth or power, or reach the heights of arts and academia, to leave some other mark on the world, or just be “another guy trying to make it,” the mediocrity of our ambitions became a self-fulfilling prophecy. To be sure, none of these goals are injurious unto themselves. They become injurious when accompanied by a certain type of ignorance about ourselves. We live entire lifetimes without getting even a brief glimpse into the nature of our own selves. This thing that we call “I,” which we carry around all our lives. Not knowing what that is. This is true mediocrity.

Hope you’re well. Stay safe. More next week.