Ordinary Life is Good Enough 平凡人生已是夠好的人生

I've recently got hold of a voice clip by Alain de Botton, a popular British philosopher, specialising in answering questions about human nature such as love, relationship, happy and fulfilling life; and he is a founder of School of Life. This time the topic was "What's Wrong With Living an Ordinary Life?". What he said about simple ordinary life really resonates with me, I can't agree more. The voice clip on YouTube is worth listening. I have quoted some words from Alain de Botton in the lower part of the article.

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I write this article because:

Many university/school students across the world had chosen to end their lives after or around exams or graduation time, even some old people/ the needy/ the caregivers had chosen to kill themselves because of the feeling of loss of value, long-term tiredness/ hopelessness, long-term emotional and physical torture etc, which saddened me. My soul was disturbed. More and more of them had been suffered from different level of emotional problems. 

When I turn around and look at the society now I am in, especially in the Asian-proWestern culture, love and forgiveness seem rare. Rather, "competition", and I''m sorry to say, some sort of "blaming" and "unforgiving" culture have taken root nurturing. The value the society have put in our mind and soul doesn't seem right to me. In one of my articles <The Top Five of My List>, I mentioned, a bit of it, that when I met new faces outside my workplace, people usually asked me, "What do you do for a living?". I hated this ice-breaking question, I thought "what I do is not your business, and yours to me". What I hated wasn't the person asking the question, or how impolite of such a question was, what I hated was actually the question had become a balance to weigh the value of another person.

The World's Value

We have been immersing and simmering in such wrong and misguided values. Nor do the youngsters get it right, we adults in this context aren't getting anything right neither. We compete our social status, power, wealth, beauty, body shape...with each other. We are trying to gain social acceptance or admiration. This is what the world teaches us - pride through competition/comparison. The things we rely on, to gain our values, are these outwardly superficial things - these however are all worthless to us, none of these can spell who we are. All these are fleeting, unstable, withering, perishable, destructible. The silly bit is our value is inherently here. It is that only we, the core of ourselves, the deepest part of us, means to us. They have never talked about the meaning of life. Please honestly ask yourself, "who else do you want to impress using those fleeting superficial things?". The answer perhaps is someone on street, someone next door, or someone you don't even know. So why bother? Your value is you, the unique you, yourself!

Some universities/schools, not all of them, have been, though implicitly, advocating academic performance means everything to students, it almost like creating labels on the students' heads as if telling them if they don't do well at university, you're gonna end up being useless, inferior, unemployed, no value in the society, etc. Academic performance is not everything, wealth is not everything either. As I had mentioned in <Qualification Inflation>, academic performance/qualification is no longer important as compared to your personality, openness and flexibility, soft communication skills, learning ability in modern society. So isn't it silly to be so hard (if not too hard) on ourselves to attain the top of the class? And then, push yourself again to attain the top of the university, then city, country, and keep repeating it until you reach the top of the world?

 

We Are Ordinary, But Good Enough

Let's be honest, there is only 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth in the whole country of US, and this is similar to the UK  <下流世代>.  In another word, a very big chunk of the population is gonna be "poor" or "un-wealthy", as what Alain puts it "Ordinary". Let's admit that, this is the trend. But what is a problem there? Unless we can turn this gigantic turbulent big wave around, otherwise we have to accept the reality, and let's face it. 

Look! I am not suggesting the otherwise that we should not pay any effort in our lives at work or study because we will end up to be in the 99% anyway; nor am I denying the power of money - No! Absolutely not! - as we all know, or admit in some extent, that what comes with money is freedom and independence. This is what money can buy for us, but it can't buy our values, health, love, relationship, respect, true happiness, and true life satisfaction. Money is just a tool which can lead us to some sort of freedom without the bondage of job commitment, it does not translate who you are, it does not represent your value, it does not tell your personality. 

What I am talking about here is self non-acceptance and the conformity of the world's value isn't doing any good to our mental health. What if we can't reach the top of the society? What if we can't make a certain amount of money as whoever on YouTube or Instagram claims? What if we can't beat the stock market as somebody on Facebook boosts? What if we can't live up to the school's expectation or the society's expectation? What if we don't comply with the norms of the society? What if we can't be perfect? What if..., what if...?

Have you thought about "good enough"? We put effort to work hard in order to earn more money, then invest and generate more cashflow, and invest... Students work hard to get good results, that's no problem with that. Chasing your dream is nothing wrong, being ambitious is good, but we should have a sense to know where to stop our quest, i.e. we should know "enough is enough". Being the top, being perfect, conforming the world's standard is not the only way leading to a "good life". We don't have to be extraordinary to live a good life. Though extraordinary life is wonderful, an ordinary life is not a bad idea. "Ordinary" is good enough!

But how do we know enough is enough?  Let's put it this way, we all need to have enough money to survive our days in modern society, living at a normal common ordinary living standard, but we don't need to become one of the geniuses or billionaires, do we? We don't need to pride ourselves or get fame through the unnecessary futile quests. So the answer is "sufficient for fulfilling your present and future financial, psychological and emotional needs for maintaining a frugal life, as long as you have paid effort, and your motivation is not for winning any competition, or showing off, or gaining fame or else". This is what I mean "enough"!

 

Decoupling Effort with Good

We have to somewhat decouple the link between effort and good result. Sadly they don't necessarily come hand-in-hand. No one has ever told you if you work hard on your investment, you are not going to lose money and must get good returns. If students work hard, they must be the top of the class. We have to learn to prepare for a bit of disappointment regardless of how much effort we have put in. And learn to manage our own expectations and don't get weighed down by peoples' expectations/ society's value. We should have the courage to lose, and have the courage to happily accept it. 

Walk Our Own Path

We should walk our own path instead of following the script of the society have for us. As an old saying goes, "rain falls on the just and the unjust"; likewise, the world is not made for the most brilliant only, but for all of us. We all have the right to live in the world even though we aren't one of the brilliants. No matter who you are, old or young, healthy or sick, clever or dumb, you have a value and you are worthy of love! Focus on our own life, not on the world's focus.

We have to be extremely cautious about what value does the world has been upholding/ putting forward/ getting across to us. And what do we make ourselves reference with? Or, would the comparison rather be your present self against your past self? Or even any comparison is at all necessary?

Remember: Academic result is just an outcome, if you had given your all, it is already fine. Well done! Your outcome is just subject to a distribution of many outcomes which is governed by randomness. No worry! Learn from it, review your method, revise your strategy and get go again for the next test! Life is a course of iterative learning process. No need to force yourself to get the crown of the world, there is absolutely no need! Learn to forgive yourself, let go, learn and move on! Do not foolishly push yourself out for comparison! You just need to be happy to be yourself. If deem necessary, seek help from others. Life is good!

 

 

 

Here are the quotes from Alain de Botton:

• "We live in a world of snobs. A snob is anyone who take a small part of you and uses that to become an universal and rigid sense of who you are and how much you matter."
  

• "The kind of snobbery that is dominant today ...  is what job you have and in particular how impressive of your powers of financial accumulation are. And according to that criteria, people will judge you immediately."
  

• "I don't think we live in a materialistic world. We simply live in a world where material accumulation has become a gateway to the respect and love that we all crave."
  

• "When you see somebody is driving a Ferrari, don't think they are greedy or materialistic. This is somebody with an intense need for love, who has not been able to find the honour and respect they need in normal ways, and therefore, they're needing so much stuff in order to feel they have the right to exist."
  

• "One of the most beautiful but also dangerous ideas is the American idea. There is the notion that anyone can achieve anything. ... It is a beautiful message but it is a dangerous message, .... because if you really believe in a world where you can do anything, and if you've only done a bit, you've only done something, how crushed you'd feel. The possibility for humiliation is so much greater now."
  

• "If you go to an American bookshop, there are basically two kinds of books in the book shelf. The first kind of the books is 'how to make a million dollars in an afternoon', and the other books are 'how to cope with low self-esteem'."
  

• "The two are totally related because if you live in a culture of  .... 'how to make a million in an afternoon', you gonna have a massive self-esteem problem because how can you achieve the esteem of yourself when you gonna be the 99%, not the 1%. "
  

• "Most of us are going to have an ordinary life. What have we dumbed building a world in which ordinary life is not good enough? This is crazy! This is a form of self-torture!"
  

• "We are now created a life where an ordinary life is materialistically more comfortable than it's ever been. With an ordinary life, you can get a good car, you are able to have a bath every night, you can have a roof over your head, you can have pretty nourished food, so materially an ordinary life is terrific!" 
  

• "But then, we put a snake in the grass. We've ruined paradise we built, our ancestors had built, for ourselves by telling ourselves, that actually contrary to what we'd hoped for, that an ordinary life is psychologically not good enough. It is not good enough to drive an ordinary car, live in an ordinary house, have an ordinary bath, have an ordinary meal, that's not good enough. You need to be extraordinary, become Mark Zuckerberg!, become somebody else! This is a kind of torture we impose on ourselves. We are insane!"

• "How have we made our lives, with the statistical odds, you will be leading a life that 99% sure leading to a life has come to the humiliation of the wrong sort of life. This is setting yourself up for disaster."
  

• "All of us, 99%, are fated ordinary. Ordinary life is a good life."
  

• "Let's not torture ourselves that the only way to be good enough is to be extraordinary. This is poison!"

• "A bit of ambitious is fantastic! ..... We are not in any danger of being unambitious, the danger now is suicide.... The danger is that we would feel so inadequate in relation to the expectations placed upon us ..."
  

• "We are suffering from an epidemic of mental unwellness, largely bred by the expectation that our lives will be stellar. When in fact, they are far more likely only to be ordinary. Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick."
  

• "It's okay to fail, it is okay to be ordinary. It's okay not to know what's going on..." 
  

• "Joy is not going to make $10 million dollars. Joy is going to be a drink with a friend, joy is gonna be a meal turns out okay... Love is not gonna be perfection, love is gonna be occasionally hand held by somebody who understands a bit of you, never the whole of you, but has a charity towards your darkest moments. That is the life we are gonna lead. And let that be okay."

 

Reference

FightMediocrity, What's Wrong With Living an Ordinary Life?, available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAYmoxbfnvc

 

School of Life, Why an Ordinary Life Can Be a Good Life?, available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHVZVCbicTg

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