Essay on mediocre

Mediocrity lurks within excellence, waiting for an opportunity to manifest. Yet the opposite does not hold true. And here excellence is its own worst enemy, for such is its appetite for progress that what is excellent today will undoubtedly be mediocre tomorrow. Mediocrity, on the other hand, is trapped in time.

To the casual observer mediocrity is mono-emotional, and there is nothing more disconcerting than its smile – feigning to assure, but assuring only doubt. Consider this: the word mediocre is the chief beneficiary of its own influence. A great many dictionaries cite mediocrity as an antonym for excellence.

Mediocrity is fickle, fluctuating between anger and apathy. When it is angry the cause is resentment – it recognises excellence and understands it will never be able to achieve it, and this is the source of intense distress. But that is a truth mediocrity can never express and so the anger swells within it.

“Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people” wrote the French essayist Joseph Joubert. Perhaps mediocrity has some way to go before it usurps excellence itself but certainly it is fair to say that, in the public mind, it enjoys equal billing with the adequate, the average and the acceptable, as opposed to their opposites.