“You’re weird.” This is a statement that has been levelled at me my entire life, usually coupled with “Why can’t you be ordinary like everybody else?” Without even knowing it, those who have called me weird and asked the question have already given themselves they’re own answer. To put it simply, why would I want to be like everybody else? Yes life is without a doubt easier if you decide to conform to what is the perceived norm, to meander along life following the herd and not diverting from a specified path, but where is the challenge in that? Where is the excitement? Where is the risk? Maybe I am different from everybody else but I need those three things, I need to make my own path, conquer my own challenges and go head to head with my own risks.
That’s not to say I haven’t tried to conform, as a teenager I desperately wanted to fit in, to have something I belong to. I didn’t want to be the lanky skinny teen who had nothing in common with his peer group, and I did everything I could to try and be part of the in crowd. Looking back it’s laughable, in my naivety I thought by trying to be something everybody else wanted me to be, I would be happy. If anything that made me more depressed than being the outsider looking in with envious eyes. Instead I was the liar on the inside looking to the outside, still envious, but of the freedom I had given away in my desperate search for acceptance. The grass really isn’t always greener on the other side.
So why has this subject come to the forefront of my mind today? It’s a twofold one, the subject first came to me after reading a blog post by Lawrence Jones, the MD of UKFast –who if you don’t know who he is I suggest you google him as he is an amazing businessman and his blog wonderfully insightful- about driven people and how these are the people you want around you. Well today looking around the people I currently work with I’ve realised so many of the people I call colleagues are, for lack of a better word, Sheep. They have no passion, no drive to go further, to better themselves. In a job where mediocrity is seen as the highest standard required, they excel.
Now I know this sounds like I’m looking down my nose at them and that’s not how it’s intended but what is clear is that where I am constantly hunting and thinking of ways we could be improving the service we provide or finding new ways of doing things, the highlight of my colleagues day is talking about who is going to win Britain’s Next Celebrity Soap Star turned Taxidermist with Fire Batons on Ice – you may notice I’m not a reality TV fan, Masterchef and my secret bad indulgence of Americas next top model excluded – and all look at me strangely when I remark that I haven’t a clue who they are talking about, or shock of all shocks that I’m busy working, which seems to be an optional activity to participate in at my work place. I don’t think of myself as better than them, I’m not that narcissistic, I’m just different from them. Where they may very well be happy to bumble along from one day to the next free of challenge or variety, it’s these very things I crave, that I thrive off of, that make me feel alive and as if I’m doing something. This is why I have a myriad of hobbies, this is why I’m always looking for a challenge, and this is why I can’t be “normal or ordinary”.
Anybody can excel in mediocrity and if that’s what being normal is, then fantastic for the normal people, me? I’m damned happy that I’m anything but normal, who wants to excel when the competition is so limited anyway.
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