An Undistinguished Life - Feb 2 2023

 

An Undistinguished Life

Feb 2 2023

Records are meant to be broken

but not by me.

My name

is not affixed to any trophies,

and all my ribbons

are consolation,

as if participation really counts.

Meanwhile, the many did not finishes

are lost to history,

and for that

I can only give thanks.

Still, I compete against myself.

And even though nobody cares

I try not to fudge the rules

or flirt with complacency.

I admit, there is some smugness in this;

the purity

of doing the thing for its own sake,

the resistance

to social comparison.

Freud spoke

of the narcissism of small differences.

And thinking of the diminishing returns

at the limit of performance,

those differences only get smaller;

seconds reduced to fractions

all the way down

to micros and nanos.

Like Zeno's paradox

of the arrow to the target,

the distance shrinking

into meaninglessness.

So giving up on archery

is fine by me,

treading water

good enough.

A leisurely walk

and self-indulgent poetry,

a face

no one ever notices.

No record-breaking achievements,

an undistinguished life.

And the dusty trophy

in the second-hand store

corroding on a shelf?

A name I can barely make out,

no idea what it's for.

Something about the quarterback Tom Brady's retirement gave rise to this. Perhaps the contrast between driven people – the high achievers – and me. Or perhaps the line between unbecoming self-importance and virtuous humility. Or maybe the underachiever is the solipsist:   immune to the external validation other people seek.