Tag Archives: mediocre

Baritone

Baritone: (n) an adult male singing voice between tenor and bass.Dictionary B

In my teen years, I found myself caught up in the world of Southern Gospel music. This was brought about because the church I attended was feverishly interested in the medium.

Southern Gospel music is a collision of real gospel music, barbershop quartets, revivalism and a bit of show business (without admitting that you’re performing).

The quartet is usually male and is divided into four singing parts:

  • Bass: a voice that covers the deep root note of each chord
  • Lead: that’s the melody boy
  • High tenor: which generally speaking is an alto part, taken up an octave
  • And baritone. Nobody ever wanted to be baritone.

The baritone part was always considered a symbol of weakness. It was the part for those men who were not manly enough to perform very low notes, nor strong enough to carry the song’s melody, or high enough to dazzle the audience with tones in the clouds.

It was a standard joke. Whenever the baritone member of the group was introduced, the emcee would say, “Barely a tone passes from his lips.”

But here’s the interesting thing: most male speakers or singers are baritones. So as always, we take the common and we make it mediocre, causing the majority of the folks around us to feel inadequate, as we worship the handful who do the extremes and make the news.

Until we learn to take the people in our lives who are emotional, spiritual, mental and physical baritones and teach them to shine out the very best they can with what they’ve got, we will have a world of over-promoted tenors and basses … and jealous “barely-a-tones.”

 

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Average

Average: (adj) mean or median norm, meaning something that represents a middle point.

It caused me to become a better man, dad, writer, musician, driver, shopper, handler of money and general human being.dictionary with letter A

The day I realized that everything in life eventually averages out and lands in the realm of modicum was the time that I finally knew how to set my goals.

Let me give you an example:

When I looked over at the batch of children hatched from my lust and whim, I thought to myself, what do I want these little dudes to be in 25 years?

At first, my list of requests and preferences was too long. And then I came up with three words:

  • Solvent
  • Loving
  • Creative

With that in mind, I developed my parenting approach.

To make sure they were solvent, I never gave them money without giving them work. Why? Because the only ways to get money other than working for it is winning the lottery and stealing. You can see why I chose what I did. They did not always like the work, and their work was usually pretty mediocre. But even an average work ethic pushed them to the front of the class.

To make them loving, I forced them to go see people who were not very lovely–hurting, frustrated, addicted and poverty-stricken. They were somewhat repulsed, but still ended up much more empathetic than some of their friends.

And finally, creative. Every time they wanted me to buy them something, do something for them or get them off the hook for using their talents, I refused and made them produce something with their own hearts and hands, even though I must tell you, the result was often so ugly that I needed to quickly bury it in the back yard.

Still, they knew they were responsible to come to Earth and provide resources instead of just consume them.

Since human beings will generally end up average, it’s a good idea to have a standard. That’s why we keep Santa Claus around–he reminds us of the importance of giving.

And we maintain a belief in God, although we’re not sure…because He encourages us to find our better humanity. 

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Archetype

dictionary with letter A

Archetype (n): a typical example of a person or thing; an original that has been imitated.

Even though I am sure the number changes continually, the numeral I garnered from research was 353.

That is the number of Protestant Christian denominations at work in our world today.

Some people think this is a necessity so that we’re able to express our personality flair with our spiritual experience. But with each and every one of these denominations comes a focus on a specific point of philosophy or doctrine, which makes them imbalanced from the overall impression that was intended by the archetype of the faith, Jesus of Nazareth.

If you want to be mocked and considered naive, just merely suggest that the ideal circumstance for Christians is to attempt to live like Jesus. People will smile at your abstract innocence and say, “Well, many things are open to interpretation.”

(With that I would agree. That’s why we should avoid many things.)

But the gospel records give us a great shadow of the lifestyle of this carpenter-turned-preacher, so we certainly should be able to focus on a few personality traits and incorporate them into our practice.

1. Our archetype, Jesus, didn’t care if people were religious or whores–just as long as they knew that a certain amount of repentance is necessary for us all.

2. Jesus didn’t favor Jews over Gentiles, making the Jews very upset and the Gentiles stomp around, joyously saying, “‘Bout time.”

3. Jesus was not impressed with the traditions of men, which were manipulated so as to generate a climate of intellectualism instead of true spirituality.

4. Jesus didn’t really care much about people who wanted to be mediocre.

5. Jesus didn’t chase people down. He let them find him and bring their faith.

6. Jesus was more concerned about people who were lost than about people who were found–or at least, thought they were.

7. Jesus wasn’t impressed with the Temple.

8. Jesus was not a person who was focused on the family. He said, “Those who love only their family are no better than the heathen.”

9. Jesus bravely died on the cross but made it clear that the person who betrayed him was the Son of Hell. Certainly not a letter of recommendation for Judas.

10. Jesus made his gospel about love and challenged those who trivialized it to seek a deeper understanding of the word and its potential.

There’s only one thing I know for sure–if all these denominations came face-to-face with Jesus, there would be 353 disappointed board meetings.

Jesus didn’t come to make everybody happy. He came to get us to feel and think. That usually, for a brief season … makes everyone a little uncomfortable.

 

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A-OK

dictionary with letter A

A-OK: (adj) in good order (e.g. everything will be A-OK)

Is my “A-OK” your “great” or could it be that my “fantastic” is your “mediocre?” A-OK has validity only if the people delivering the report are reliable.

This has come up many times in my life, but especially in the realm of parenting children.

I would often ask one of my sons to go down and clean up the garage, and when I inquired about the success of the project, I got the following replies:

  • “A-OK”
  • “Great.”
  • “Pretty good.”
  • “It was really a mess down there.”
  • “I did my best.”
  • And even, “Come on, Dad. It’s just a garage.”

You can see how these responses are not confidence building. The problem is, I had to filter what they said through who they were.

We now live in a time when “A-OK” is spoken too easily, with the hope that the lacking in effort will be made up for by either luck, God, or more than likely, the patient repair of other folks who follow us.

Sometimes it terrifies me to get in a car and drive along, realizing that it’s being made with the quality control of today’s corporate thinking.

Whatever happened to pride in work?

I know we have the adage of “going the second mile,” but truthfully, that statement lacks any punch if we all have not pre-determined the length of the first mile.

Because every day of my life, I meet individuals who are convinced they have done more than they needed to, never realizing they have fallen short of adequate.

I have rejected “A-OK” from my lingo.

So what I chose to do instead is to quickly explain the choices I have made in my efforts, and then allow other people to ascertain the status.

Because if we do not discover what is bare minimum, we will begin to dangerously flirt with incompetence.

So the greatest danger we face is our own sleepy attempts to cut corners … and end up cutting ourselves.

 

 

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Anymore

dictionary with letter A

Anymore: (adv) usually used with a negative connotation, to any further extent; any longer: (e.g. she refused to listen anymore)

I don’t want to focus on color anymore.

I don’t want to pursue an eye for an eye anymore.

I don’t want to treat women as opponents anymore.

I don’t want to be jealous of my fellow-humans anymore.

I don’t want to make God work so damn hard to save me anymore.

I don’t want to look across a room and decide what I think about a person anymore.

I don’t want to be so demanding anymore.

I don’t want to look for a savior in politics anymore.

I don’t want to eat more than I need anymore.

I don’t want to pray to a God in heaven without looking for Him on earth anymore.

I don’t want to watch trash on TV that has been touted as art anymore.

I don’t want to hurt people anymore.

I don’t want to call my selfishness self-preservation anymore.

I don’t want to accept pornography, excess and violence anymore.

I don’t want to pretend that abortion is a casual choice anymore.

I don’t want to insist that I have a “fat gene” anymore.

I don’t want to don the robes of judgment anymore.

I don’t want to get in a bad mood and pick a fight anymore.

I don’t want to rationalize my bad behavior anymore.

I don’t want to look on the rest of the world as non-American anymore.

I don’t want to believe in a God who claims to be love but occasionally sprouts hate through his followers anymore.

I don’t want to second-guess my generosity anymore.

I don’t want to look back on the “anymores” of my life which were opportunities to set myself apart and do something great, and choose to be mediocre anymore.

“Anymore” doesn’t have to be negative if you use it to do positive things … to battle your own stupidity.

 

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Alumnus

dictionary with letter A

Alumnus: (n) a graduate or former student, esp. male, of a particular school, college or university

I am an alumnus–even though my degree was not acquired through higher education, but rather, lower institutions of learning–by overcoming mediocre concerns.

I have learned.

  • I’ve had the benefit of competing with those who graduated from the University of Misunderstanding, whose main function is to cause trouble in life and disrupt the common good.
  • I have dealt with those from the College of Petty Jealousy–completely insecure about the training they received, confident that the best way for them to succeed is to intimidate others.
  • I certainly easily surpassed those from the Institute of Procrastination.
  • Quietly walked away from the competition posed by the Graduate School of Bitterness.
  • Found different ways to construct my future, rather than succumbing to the curriculum at the Technical School of Bigotry.
  • And even refused a scholarship from the Doctorate Program at Meanness.

I received my diploma from the Nothing Works Out Immediately University, with my major in Patience.

I am grateful for this training.

And it also makes class reunions much more pleasant.


Alienate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alienate:(v) cause someone to feel isolated or estranged: e.g. an urban environment that would alienate its inhabitants

Some words are symbiotic twins. (Are the words “symbiotic” and “twins” redundant? I’ll have to look that up.) Anyway, they work together to create a good or to create the potential for evil.

You will never need to alienate another human being as long as you’re willing to confront the mediocre in your life.

For instance, if you run across people who are better than you at some task, rather than trying to attack their acumen, you evolve and learn from them. If you accept the mediocre in your life, it becomes necessary to foster a disgruntled attitude and discover something unseemly about your competition.

All prejudice is grounded in a sense of mediocrity. I will tell you, if the white people in the South prior to the Civil War had raised offspring who could work the fields, toiling with the same diligence as the Africans, they wouldn’t have felt the need to alienate the hostages as inferior, but instead, would have joined them, shoulder to shoulder, pursuing their cotton-picking minds.

I know when I start becoming critical of others, it is a warning sign that I’ve accepted mediocre behavior, and because some strangers have dared to be superior to me, I begin to find fault and separate them from my field of play and stable of friends.

We do it in politics. We certainly do it in religion. We do it in corporations, by trying to spread rumors about another company’s hiring practices instead of allowing for the product itself to find place in the market.

Mediocre and alienate are twins.

If you are alienating somebody from your life right now, it’s because you’ve accepted some sort of mediocre attitude as normal. And if you’re mediocre, you will eventually need to alienate people who dare to excel.

It’s why in the United States it is more popular to talk about our uniqueness than it is to review our plans and critique our progress. When the stats and facts about our world placement in education, health care and even personal relationships is measured against other countries, we are not always found at the top. So this demands that we alienate. Some of our favorite terms:

  • third world
  • backward
  • non-Democratic
  • and ignorant

Great people don’t have to criticize anyone. They just evolve towards the new understanding instead of staying entrenched in tradition.

When you get rid of mediocre, you no longer feel the need to alienate other people. When you’re alienating people, it’s always a sign of some mediocre part of you trying to justify … blah.

 

Alfalfa

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alfalfa: (n) a legume with clover-like leaves and bluish flowers, native to southwestern Asia; it is widely grown for fodder.

It’s really quite amazing.

I will never be able to consider alfalfa a legume grown for fodder. Instead, the fodder of alfalfa, to me, is a scrawny white boy with painted-on freckles, black hair parted in the middle, with a huge cow-lick sticking up in the back.

Yes, I’m talking about the young man who was the hero, sometime-villain, and always dopey foil of every ill-conceived plan from the cartoon, The Little Rascals.

Recently, during a particularly satisfying episode of channel-surfing, I stumbled on one of these grainy black-and-white productions done in the 1930’s and 40’s. I decided to watch.

It surprised me that as a young kid I would have been drawn to this adventure series. First of all, we don’t need to discuss how television negatively affects children today, when back then we sat them down in front of the box to watch The Little Rascals.

They were a nasty and cantankerous group of children, who did their best to perform evil pranks on their adversaries and promoted the bigotry of the day with a wide-eyed, purposely dumbed-down black child named Buckwheat.

Alfalfa was especially annoying to me. But I realized he was the exact representation of what makes America so mediocre.

  • He wasn’t as attractive as he thought he was.
  • He wasn’t the leader he thought he was.
  • He wasn’t as successful as he thought he was.
  • And just like so many of these musical shows on TV today, he couldn’t sing as well as he thought he could.

I kept waiting for something redeemable to come out of the escapade–some sort of Aesop moral which a young child could take away from the television set and proudly say, “There. I learned something positive today.”

It just wasn’t there.

Matter of fact, if some of the deeds of The Little Rascals were taken to juvenile court, they would definitely be spending some time behind bars, eating chicken pot pies.

So the word “alfalfa” is perhaps ruined for me forever because it represents a bratty, snotty, untalented young boy who thinks too highly of himself.

So please forgive me for failing to recognize the agricultural possibilities. Yes, I guess alfalfa is supposed to be a legume.

But on The Little Rascals … he was a fruitcake.

Absence

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dictionary with letter A

Absence: n. 1. the state of being away from a place or person 2. the nonexistence or lack of

Sometimes it’s just knowing that if you had something you’d be happier or if you were with someone, you could be content.

You see, that’s the danger of experiencing happiness. I think it’s why some people avoid it. I mean, if you just go neutral, pretending that things are supposed to be hard, tough or mean, then when things end up being exactly that way, you can comment that you really are not surprised because it’s what you expected.

Absence happens when we have taken the risk to allow something to fill our space, knowing that it might not last. Sometimes we wonder why life seems mediocre, as we purposely walk away from everything that might give it meaning.

But I am sympathetic. It’s a scary thing to live a life where you pursue joy and fulfillment because if it goes away, the pain and sadness are even deeper.

Yet the absence we feel in our soul over failing to participate is a bottomless well.

What a mess! If we chase the moon and we never escape Earth’s atmosphere, we will be disappointed. If we stare at our shoes and pretend there is no moon, we are equally as deprived. So it’s really a question of which “absence” you want to experience. Do you want the absence of ANY possibility of excitement and risk? Or do you want the absence of pursuing excitement and risk, tasting the first fruits, but forfeiting the blessing?

I don’t know.

But I am aware of this:

  • The human body was meant to be active.
  • The human heart was meant to feel.
  • The human soul was intended for faith
  • And the human brain was constructed to gain knowledge.

So I guess, whether we like it or not, the only way to be happy is to risk the absence of it in our lives.