Mediocrity

#115

Mediocrity


Yogi Berra, born in 1925, was a player and manager with the New York Yankees. Berra, who quit school in the eighth grade had a tendency toward malapropism and fracturing the English language in highly provocative, interesting ways. One of his famous Yogi-ism goes, “if one does not have a goal (destination) any road will take you there”. The decline in aspiration and determination by today’s youth has been blamed on the government school system. One cannot blame a child for being a drunk when he grew up often seeing beer in the refrigerator. The child who is constantly encouraged to succeed will succeed. If a child is reared in a home where the family depends on a government check or government housing subsidy, do not expect the child to excel and have a desire for a future fine home.

Daniel Webster, who died in 1852, was one of the countries greatest legal minds and former Secretary of State.  One time, he was criticized because walking down the street a slave tipped his hat to him and Webster took off his hat. When asked why he acknowledged the slave he said,  “I cannot afford for him to be a better gentlemen than me”.  In the aspirations of life the truly successful are those who take the “servant” attitude towards others.  Perhaps this is where we get the word “civil servants“.  Bureaucrats in most places have become civil masters.

Those who will escape mediocrity will have basic principals that will always set them apart from the average or mediocre. 

One of the greatest men of the Bible was Joseph, son of Jacob, a “type of Christ”, who in every way shows us the attitude of an exceptional human being.  Whether in his parents house or in  Potiphar’s house, he had the inner strength and fortitude to make him “God’s man”.  I believe that when his brothers took him out of the pit and sold him into slavery, the “iron bands” which held him on his way to Egypt enriched his very bloodstream with immunity to extend a zealousness for integrity that saw him through imprisonment, enticement, and the enrichment of a superior intellect that God used to preserve a chosen people. 

If he had yielded to Potiphar’s indecent wife, if future destiny for his family and nation had been determined by doubts and deceits starting with his own brothers, his name would have been unknown in history.  “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Genesis 50:20) 

I was reared in a conservative country community, where the men and women with whom I came in contact with were decent people, never exposed to the silly decadence of the “civilized world”.  The children in my country school had the values which they brought from their parents from home. It was only in the universities and later in the military that I was exposed to the decadence of lying, cheating, and stealing, and sexual promiscuity of the more affluent.  Even in school, and we were studying to be doctors, we were embarrassed to talk about abortion and sexually transmitted diseases.  I thought this nurse, who I was told later had been a “concubine” of a commanding officer in Japan, was just joking when she offered her intrigues to me.  I was totally naïve about the sexual behavior of many enlisted people in the military, but could not believe what went on with married people at the officers club.  I was told early, and I learned the truth, that “rank is made quicker by the sexual activity by the officers mate then by the ability of the officer“. 

The hardest lesson for this Christian to learn is that “pagans act like pagans” and, often it is hard to tell the difference between Christians and those who masquerade as Christians.  One of the most decent men I ever knew (we were born on the very same day) was an army medical officer (OBGYN) who claimed to be an atheist but he was the most Christian acting, speaking, young person I have ever known.  I never heard him curse, not even slang, his demeanor and his attitude about everything, his work, fitness, social interaction, the product of clean living and a clean mind.  He and I went to NYC in 1957 and attended the Billy Graham crusade in Madison Square Garden.  We went on to John Hopkins seeking a residency at the hospital there.  One of his friends told me, “he is the cleanest guy I have ever known”.  If only that could be said of many of us who claim what we profess and some possess. 

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost(1874-1963)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,       

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) said one time “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.  The scripture tells us that “broad is the way that leads to destruction” ( Matthew 7:13). 

Does anyone seek or appreciate the mediocre?  Whether in our profession our spiritual or physical welfare, we should stay away from mediocrity.  We only go this way once, life is not a dress rehearsal.  Character determines destination and that destination is not determined by mediocrity.