Other Things Worthy of Your Time
Average
6/22/04
So a girl I know came to me about this essay contest. She said she needed my input. I said I didn’t care and wasn’t going to help her. She’s a friend of mine though, and gorgeous. I was joking.
She had to write a 50-500 word essay on ‘Why I’m an Average American’. The first thing I thought was what a fifty word essay looks like exactly. I told her to show it to me though, and that I’d think about it.
Still joking, I said that I couldn’t read it because 500 words was too much—I don’t read anything over 100. She assured me hers wasn’t more than 200. Evidently I gave her too much credit.
She had it set up like a journal—a day in her ‘average’ life. She said she wanted it to be good, and wanted my input. I asked her if she was supposed to set it up like a journal, and she told me it was her idea but they just said to be creative. She said she was going to put her picture at the bottom…to milk her favorable countenance certainly.
She always comes to me when she has questions about personal pieces—things based on your own approach and opinion, and the type of thing it’s impossible to help somebody with without making it your own. So I told her what I would do: I wouldn’t do the journal thing, but I wasn’t the one doing it either. I said I probably wouldn’t try that hard, to be honest. I don’t win these things.
I’d be satirical. I’d just write it. I’d say I’m an average American because I’m here writing this paper. If I wasn’t average, I’d have something better to do.
I’d say I’d love to go into saying how great the paper is going to be, because I’m writing it, and how it would be a privilege to find such a personality amidst the type of usual submissions. I’d bring up how I would probably be forsaking the point of the assignment, by revealing my greatness, and it wouldn’t be average anymore, but it was a chance I was willing to take.
Then I’d remember the purpose and the assignment, and remember that I’m not great, because I’m here writing that paper, not as a privilege to someone else, but as a plea for what they have to offer me. I’d humble myself, because blatant arrogance won’t get you anywhere, and if I wrote a paper about how great I think I am when it was supposed to be about how I’m an average American, no one’s going to take me seriously. But I am an average American, because I’m unproven and unsuccessful thus far, yet still have it in me to portray that kind of arrogance.
Nobody is automatically better than anyone else. No one starts out as the best. They have to outdo the one that thinks they are. I’m just some kid who thinks he’s a writer, thinks he’s a scholar, or even thinks he’s a philosopher. Maybe I’m smart, but it doesn’t mean anything if I don’t do anything with it. Brains are insignificant, application is what matters. You succeed not by thinking, but doing.
I told this girl who came to me that I’d probably throw in some clever proverb or quote I’d come up with, something like, “greatness isn’t something you are, it’s something you’re granted.”
Actually, my creativity would be being honest, and I wouldn’t win, which is why she shouldn’t have come to me, and couldn’t do what I would.
NOTES
The girl wouldn't tell me how to enter the contest myself, even when I showed her that this was what I'd be entering with. She said I wasn't average, I was brilliant.