I admire people with grit… because I don’t have one.
I acknowledge that. And I’m fine with it now.
Athletes, musicians, scientists… those are the people I admire the most in my life. People who know what they want and stick with it for a long time are the kind of people I aspire to be. I want to be remarkably talented at something so that people would call me a prodigy, an expert, a professional.
We all went through that phase, aren’t we? Remember the time when Taufik Hidayat was the up-and-coming badminton player and every kid, like, literally every kid in this country, wanted to be a badminton athlete? Or that time when The Queen’s Gambit came out and suddenly we all had a chess game on our phones with the hope that maybe we have a hidden talent in chess?
I believe that we all have a desire to be great, at least once in our lifetime.
Nonetheless, apart from being born with talent, I sometimes forget that those gifted people have one thing in common that I will probably never have: grit. They are willing to practice relentlessly, doing the same thing over and over again until they master it. That’s an impossible task for me. I could reckon the first time I started learning how to play the piano again after 6 years with no contact with a piano or a keyboard. I relearned from the very basic (playing the notes with 10 fingers) and I got so bored with it that I switched to guitar after less than 6 months of class.
It’s not like I’m proud of being a fickle-minded person. I hate it. I hate being a person who changed her mind so easily, a person who is not able to make a quick, simple decision — such as what to order in a restaurant — because I kept on thinking of other possibilities that I might miss while making certain choices. I have tried to get rid of that capricious side of me to accomplish one grand desire which is to escape mediocrity. I fully acknowledge that in order to be great, I need to have grit, perseverance, and patience. But, mediocrity is extremely frightening to me to the point that I keep on jumping to the next opportunity that comes in front of my face with the belief that my path to greatness might be on that sailing boat, and I should not miss out. Each time I made the jump, I never hated the decision but my subconscious mind kept telling me that I, once again, surrendered to my wanderlust.
***
There is this series called Haikyuu (Yes, Haikyuu the anime) that is very light yet thought-provoking. The series illustrates how everyone has their own battles — Hinata and his height, Tsukishima and his unmotivated attitude, Liev and his reckless moves, or Kageyama and his perfectionism. Despite all the differences, each of them has one big goal in mind: to be the best volleyball player ever. However, there is one particular figure that is kind of different from everyone else. It’s Kita Shinsuke, the captain of Inarizaki. Let me tell you why this guy is the most wholesome character I have ever encountered in anime.
“I am built upon small things that I do every day, and the end results are no more than a byproduct of that. You gotta do it every day. Properly, every day. Taking care of yourself, cleaning, tidying up, greetings, volleyball…”
Seeing Shinsuke’s backstory and hearing his thoughts made me realize that there is beauty in mediocrity. It’s fine to be ordinary. We don’t always need to have grandiose ambitions or make major life decisions to be fully functioning individuals. Sometimes, the beauty lies in the mundane things that we do every day and those are enough to keep us going.
***
I am mediocre.
I acknowledge that. And I’m fine with it now.
I will go on with my life with the hope that someday I will understand how precious it is to simply exist. Yielding to time might be the best decision for now. To fully understand what it means to be mediocre takes a long and slow-paced walk. There will be countless iterations, constantly changing thought processes, and dozens of personality tests (lol).
May 4th, 2021
