I don’t talk to god, and he doesn’t speak to me. I like it that way. Conversations with the gods are for geniuses and madmen. Instead of confiding in creators, I am more comfortable chatting with creatures I recognise.
I’ve grown up through a time where teachers and parents and management consultants have glorified ‘excellence’. I have been encouraged to “aspire to greatness”, to be a winner, to be a leader. Year after year I heard the mantras that anyone can grow up to be Prime Minister, that here is only one place to be, and that’s in the seat of number one. Don’t be a loser, I was warned. I tried to follow this well-meant advice, but it never quited worked in my mind, the mantle of greatness never fit my shoulders, I felt a bit like the emperor with no clothes.
After 70 years of listening to such nonsense, I have finally reached plain ground of comfortable normality - not on the peak of genius, not in a hole of failure. I can happily look at my image in the mirror in the morning and say to myself “phew; you’re ordinary.”
This has taken a life time for me to understand. I want to be ordinary.
I have finally realised that I don’t have to be a Thomas Edison - although I wouldn’t object to the royalties if I could make something original like his electric lamp or gramaphone. I have heard the story that his main invention came to him only after he tried 1 000 ideas that didn’t work. In my case I make 1 000 mistakes before I put together an ordinary day that seems to work OK.