Swimming Through Mediocrity ... Or Finding the Song

 Good morning, ladies. Thanks for your comments on Rebecca St. James' post. She'll appreciate them -- and so do I. They gave me some insights into where you are, which you shared with your usual eloquence. Seriously, do you KNOW how unusual you are? In a world of tweets and texts and emoticons, you give us phrases like Paige's "swimming through mediocrity."

Man, I wish I'd thought of that myself. Really.

Here's what I'm hearing from you. Correct me if I'm wrong:

    * As a teen you had big dreams that changed daily.

    *  Now that you're in college and thinking more realistically toward the future you wonder if any of that is even possible. Can you actually do anything to change the world?

    * You're trying to trust God in that, although it's hard to see how that trusting is playing out in your day to day life.

    *And meanwhile, you're in college because you know you need a good education to do any of the things you still dream of, but it doesn't feel like you're actually getting anywhere. It's a stuck feeling.

    * Besides, what if you just have to accept that you're never going to do anything really great? Where does that leave you? Swimming through mediocrity?

The thought of that actually makes me wince. Just the very fact that you can put that into words means you are far, far from the mediocre puddle that so many people slog through. Henry David Thoreau (pictured above) wrote,    “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

What Thoreau assumes -- and I do too, as a Christ follower -- is that each of us DOES have a song in us. I think losing sight of that is one of the most dangerous things we can do.

Humility isn't accepting that you will never do anything that effects change. It's accepting that the changing isn't all about you being in the spotlight for it. Thoreau left society to live at Walden Pond and look at his life. As far as anybody else was concerned, he wasn't doing a stinkin' thing for the world. But the writings that resulted from that have some of the most influential in modern thought.

Let's talk about this, because I think it's HUGELY important. These are a couple of questions that come to my mind, but feel free to branch out from here.

    * DO you believe that God has put a song in you? Whether you know what it is yet or not, do you really believe it's there?

    * ARE you "swimming in mediocrity" in any part of your life? (I think our society is the perfect climate for that, actually)

    * GIVE an example of how trusting God has played out in some ordinary way, lifting a moment out of the swamp of mediocrity.

Of course, feel free to discuss this with each other in your comments. I think we've gotten to the root of something here, so let's keep digging.

Blessings,

Nancy Rue