Some people soar, others stumble. For most of us, as we get older, we end up becoming more and more mediocre as well. I call this the feeling of being a jack of all trades but a master at none: decent at everything, great at nothing.
There are some people, when you look at them, there’s just something about them, some sort of drive or passion, that makes you think: that person is going to be successful. Then there are others who you realize may never be exceptional. Sometimes I get scared that I’m one of those people.
When I was younger, I really loved writing with every part of me and more. It awed me how a singular word could possess such an intricate meaning — cleave, hiraeth, sonder, tacenda, and so many more. My dream was to be an author. At the time, it wasn’t an unrealistic goal, because my love for the art of language was truly proportional to my skill.
I used to be able to write thousands of words in just an hour. I could fashion 100-page novellas over a single 3-week winter break. Teachers told me that I was one of the best young writers they had ever seen.
But now, it takes me hours to write an 800-word article. What was the difference? Was it because I had passion then that I lack now? Or was it because I lost confidence in my own abilities? Perhaps both?
With passion, even a mediocre artist can become phenomenal. Passion bridges the gap between hard work and talent. But with age, I have burned out and exhausted all of my passion, as many children who are told that they are “gifted and talented” do. With age, something that was once extraordinary simply remains extra-ordinary.
It’s normal for artists to regress to the mean as they become older. After all, the hand of talent can’t feed your artistry forever. What’s incredibly difficult is to cope with the feeling of mediocrity after being treated as exceptional your entire life.
Artists are not supposed to be mediocre. Artists are supposed to transform the mundane into the beautiful. Artists are supposed to be anything but average. So when I sit there with my mediocre poems, my mediocre articles, and my mediocre artworks, and I don’t see beauty in a single one, how can I not feel less than as an artist? How can I claim the title of an “artist” when I’m a jack of all trades, yet not a master of a single one?
By treating mediocrity as the new standard for failure, our culture has done a great deal of damage to young artists. When artists who were conditioned to be special their entire lives suddenly start to realize that they’re no longer remarkable, they stop creating entirely for the fear of producing inadequate results.
This maladaptive self-defense mechanism can be compared to formerly incarcerated individuals who practice societal withdrawal to reject the institutions they anticipate stigma from before those same institutions can reject them.
Likewise, artists tend to withdraw from their medium of art before their skills have the chance to relapse. As long as they don’t create anything new, mediocre artists can still cling to the illusion of their childhood brilliance because there is no tangible work to reveal their regression.
But, when you think about it, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of art itself? The purpose of art is to create simply out of love for creation. By telling young artists that they are destined to be great, the value of art shifts from creation to self-worth and external validation.
Every artist has their own unique artistry and creative cognition — not one form of creation is inherently better than another. As difficult as it sounds, young artists must embrace the idea of being average. We cannot create with the expectation of being excellent. Rather, we should create with the expectation of getting better, even if that minor improvement takes a lot of effort to obtain.
As much as I love awards and programs like YoungArts and Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, sometimes I wonder how much more art would be appreciated if we simply rewarded and advocated for the feat of creation itself. Because in this day and age, where people are expected to be great artists straight out of the womb, creating is a huge act of courage in itself.
The idiom “jack of all trades, master of none” only tells half the story. The full idiom is “a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
Sometimes we forget that variety goes a long way. So here’s a little reminder to embrace the art of being average. Let there be value not in the inherent greatness of things but in the craft of seeking progress. In a society that favors extremes, learn to find contentment in the middle ground.
