"They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity.""If everyone's special, then nobody is."
There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.
Personally, I think that excellence in any form scares some insecure folks who, rather than try to improve themselves, attempt to pull down the excellent.
Hey, look, we're not all equally good at the same things. But we should have enough internal fortitude to appreciate excellence even if it is not our own ... in fact, especially if it is not our own! In fact, how petty and small and circumscribed and claustrophobic and miserable a world must you live in if you such a prisoner of your own insecurities that you make an enemy of excellence itself.
Come on, I can't draw worth beans, but Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is a superlative joy -- and you don't have to be an artist yourself to take pleasure in it. We all can't be Michelangelo or Shakespeare or Beethoven or any of a vast array of luminaries, but should we not be delighted that they were and that they brought beauty and splendor to the world?
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