Friday, June 13, 2014

On Celebrating Mediocrity

A growing trend I am noticing nowadays, after having experienced the intense activism of the Nithyananda Sangha, is the way everyone is my old world is comfortable with mediocrity.

While I am all for appreciating the small things in life, I am seeing there being an undercurrent of "having given up on the big things of life". 

Poverty - "we don't know how to fix it". War and cruelty - "too big for us to do anything about". Corruption - "India is never going to change".  Westernization and depression among our kids - "They will struggle and and find their own way. Didn't  we?".  "But did you see the beautiful flowers growing in our garden?". Seems innocuous. Almost cute and maybe even profound. But underlying the apparent appreciation of life is a deep rejection of it and resigning to a life of mediocrity. 

I do not find it cute. I find it dangerous. In the name of acceptance we are leaving a life of struggle and shallowness to our children and preventing them from the possibilities of living a life that is so much greater than what we are setting them up for. Surely they deserve better and so does our world.