I stepped off the stage at my gymnastics meet, absolutely elated. I didn’t get a medal but I got a ribbon for placing 7th in my age group of 60 preteen girls. It was the best I’d ever done and I was proud of myself. I ran to my coach, beaming. He congratulated me curtly, then said “I like my girls to place in the top 10%.” Even though I sucked at math, I knew I’d missed the top 10% by one spot. I sat down on the mats deflated, my personal best not good enough.
It seems there is no middle ground between participation trophies and the constant pressure to excel.
American exceptionalism is not simply about our country as a whole, but also about each individual’s supposed ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, to live the American dream, go from rags to riches, find their calling/purpose/passion, hustle 24/7, reach for the stars, and live their best lives.
Just like we as a society often look down on “flyover country”, we also pity the masses living quiet lives, struggling to make ends meet, and dealing with essential but totally common daily difficulties like health, parenting, jobs, and housing. The irony is of course, that are looking down on ourselves. We are the masses.
And yet, we pay more attention to the rare hero stories we are so enamored with. The immigrant with $5 in their pocket working their way up to take over a small business and turn it into a multi-million dollar corporation. The humble but talented singer/dancer/entertainer who has cancer/dead parents/has overcome drug addiction/is homeless/all of the above providing the right feel-good story/tragedy porn backstory on various reality TV shows, where they will inevitably win over the audience and judges. The brilliant high school dropout who starts a band/company in their garage, only to become a rockstar/get acquired by Apple. The underprivileged, minority kid who spent every waking second playing basketball from an early age only to be given a college scholarship and scouted by their favorite NBA team.
We don’t care that these things happening to us or our kids or best friends are pretty much zero. We don’t care that these are exceptions involve a shit ton of sheer luck and that we don’t know about the millions of other people who didn’t make it. Whether it’s timing, economical restraints, biological limits, systemic disadvantages, or a combination of these, as a culture we believe these things can be overcome if we just try hard enough.
Having to accept complete personal responsibility means not having the life you want is probably your fault because you’re lazy, you don’t want it bad enough, you watched Netflix instead of starting a side hustle, or you didn’t, you know…. ”manifest” your limitless life. Manifesting just sounds like a hippie term for prayer. Whether you ask Jesus for what you want or the Universe, it doesn’t matter. If you end up poor, jobless, or get cancer, it’s because you didn’t pray hard enough or didn’t order the correct life from the universe.
The vast majority of us live in the middle of the bell curve, in the dreaded average section of humanity. Being what most of us are, is no longer acceptable. Mediocrity is worse than even complete failure. We’re more interested in people’s catastrophic failures and meteoric successes than the vast majority of our lives that happen in the grey, the messy middle.
I don’t tell my kids they can be anything they want to be. Because they can’t, and neither can I. Don’t tell me I could still make it to the Olympics if I tried hard enough. I can’t. But in today’s parenting, this seems like a cardinal sin because we don’t want to do anything to hurt our children’s self-esteem or make them settle or give up something they’re interested in. But stick with me here. What if telling our kids that anyone can be whatever they want to be if they just try hard enough doesn’t liberate them but just puts pressure on them to find that one thing, their life’s purpose, and then be expected to excel at it for the rest of their lives?
What our kids may hear: I must do something extraordinary to be valuable and loved.
Photo :Shutterstock.com
Most people think they’re above average and their kids are above average, yet statistically, most of us are not. Do we think we’re better than we are because we’re arrogant, or maybe also because we know anything less than exceptional is worth little in our culture? How many people are comfortable wanting an average life, an average kid, an average job, an average relationship? Is a pretty good life enough?
Does anyone say to their kids, hey, you’re mediocre and that’s cool. Go on, be your totally average self! You’d be considered a shitty parent if you said this, because mediocre and average are insults, even though it is what most of us are. Or maybe precisely because that’s what most of us are, and we’re all about being the exception to the rule.
The truth about me is that most of my life I have been performing for people to make them like me and make me feel valuable and worthy of love and most of all, good enough. And when I wasn’t good enough, I was so ashamed that I just stopped doing things I loved. Because it’s not okay to just do them for the hell of it. Because it’s fun, because it’s engrossing, because it’s interesting.
I quit gymnastics shortly after the incident with my coach.
Can we do things without the expectation to be the best at it? Without the requirement that it has to be for something? That we have to turn a fun hobby into a side hustle to make money because enjoying something just for the sake of it is not productive? Can we enjoy things without feeling like it’s a waste of time because it’s not the one thing that we will do for the rest of our lives?
What if the thing I like the most is just sitting at a kitchen table (sub for backyard, front stoop, park bench, etc.) with someone I like, talking about stuff? That’s literally one of my favorite things but most people would not consider this Instagram worthy or fit to be included in your family’s Christmas newsletter: “Juliane spent the year drinking various hot beverages with her favorite people while staying up too late talking.”
When my mom told me I could be whatever I wanted to be I think what she meant was, you don’t have to conform to one specific way of living your life that’s socially acceptable or common. I know many parents, including my mom, just want their kids to know they have options. I know my mom probably meant to say, you can be different, that’s okay.
However, what I heard was if I can be whatever I want to be, just having conversations at kitchen tables probably doesn’t sound cool enough. Working as a bank teller, living in a small apartment with two cats, and tap dancing badly as a hobby, might not cut it. Nothing against bank tellers, cats, or tap dancing. You know what I mean. When we are told we have every opportunity (even if we don’t) and that we can do whatever we want (regardless of talent, resources, or feasibility), and be whoever we choose (even though most of our personality is biology + experiences), it can be an intense amount of pressure. Always looking for the next best thing, relationship, job. Always worried we’re settling, disappointing someone, wasting our life. Always waiting for our future best life, instead of living our actual life.
So what I tell my kids in different words and different ways is not “you can be anything you want to be” but rather “you can be who you already are and that is enough.”
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Anna Shvets from Pexels
“O Lord, thou givest us everything, at the price of an effort.” –Leonardo da Vinci