On Being Average…

The world is full of inspirational stories; ones that make you feel humble and ones that force you to count your blessings. It’s good advice, but please forgive me for not letting it lead my life. In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king. I don’t wish to be king and I also don’t wish for blindness. I have advantages due to being born with an average intelligence, average sporting abilities and average advantages. We were never extremely poor. We never had to beg. We never starved. I was never disabled. My parents were not drug addicts. We were never caught up in a tsunami or earthquake. We never suffered from persecution or found our line subject to ethnic cleansing. I do count my blessings but count these as accidents of fortune. It would make more sense to contemplate the blessing of having a meteor, the size of six football pitches, narrowly miss the earth, or not.

Then there is the phoney positivity which we pass on to the young as if it is Bible. Put a smile on your face and the world becomes a happier place. In my book, a smile into the face of a world that is indifferent to suffering merely endorses and condones that abysmal state of being. Ignoring the wrongs of the world in favour of an inner sense of wellbeing is the worst thing that any caring human being can do.

A smile into the face of horrendous adversity denotes a madness at the core of its wearer; or the fact that drugs are involved.