And so it begins...

Well, everybody has to start somewhere, so here's my start. I have been thinking a lot recently on being average and exactly what it means to be average. Other terms that have gone through my mind were mediocre or normal. I've often wanted to be the best at things and very often worry that I'm quite far from it in everything. You know, the idea of Jack of all Trades, Master of none. In a lot of ways, it has paralysed my self growth and kept me from experiencing a lot of the things that I might otherwise have been able to experience had I been more willing to fail or look the fool.

So, I've decided to just start writing and not care what people in general think about it. If someone reads it and thinks me an idiot or incompetent because they think I'm rubbish at writing and that I have nothing important to say, I've decided that's just fine. They will read one note from me, think me the idiot and then leave. In the end, it's not really all that important what everone else believes about me that matters. It's about how I feel about me and this is, in a way, an effort to distance my own self-image from how I think others perceive me.

On that note, I've decided that I should try to follow the advice of a blogger that I often read and be sure to write something at least twice per week. My gut instinct is to say once, but I think that twice is just enough that it would stretch me right now, and the stretch is what I'm going for. So, I'll stretch myself and put it to the public. If no one cares, then so be it. However, if anyone notices that a week has gone by in which I haven't posted anything, please drop me a line and remind me to update things. This would be an act of service on your part to me.

And with that, I'll leave with a quote from Nathan Hatch in his Opening Mass for the 2004-2005 Academic Year to the students at Notre Dame:

As we begin a new academic year, which appropriately calls each us work to our full potential, let me offer two words of advice:

Your true identity does not derive from how successful you are. All of us, from the top of the class to the bottom, derive our tremendous worth because God, our creator, knows our name, calls us sons and daughters, and takes joy in our own unique gifts. Who you are does not rest on a fickle ability to write brilliantly, to solve the experiment correctly, or climb the organizational ladder.

My second word of advice is this: living in a pressure cooker of achievement, how do we view our neighbors. Our reactions are often twofold, to envy those who seem more gifted and to look past people who seem ordinary. In his recent book on envy, Joseph Epstein notes that envy runs high in the world of art and intellect. “How little it takes to make one academic sick with envy over the pathetically small advantages won by another: the better office, the slightly lighter teaching load, the fickle evaluation of students.”

What is the answer to resenting those who break the curve and ignoring others who seem uninteresting? In his essay, The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis asks us to attend to a proper theology of the human person. He challenges us with the awesome reality of the human person, bearers of the very image of God. “There are no ordinary people,” he concludes. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization––these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, exploit. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,” he continues, “your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”