It can feel like our lives have become exercises in improvement. We optimize our diets, our sleep, our exercise routines, our productivity, our finances, and our parenting. There is no shortage of books, podcasts, newsletters, or videos promising to help us become healthier, happier, wealthier, more productive, or more successful. If we can beat the average, not only should we, but we’d be stupid not to.
This perspective has improved our lives in countless ways. Medicine is better because we optimize it. Airplanes are safer and more fuel efficient because we optimize them. The idea of continuous improvement across domains is a powerful tool. The challenge is that when we train ourselves to optimize one domain, it can be difficult not to avoid bringing that mindset to other areas where it is less helpful.
When our attention is fixed on becoming better, it shifts away from simply being. A conversation becomes an opportunity to network, exercise becomes a way to achieve a different body, meditation becomes a technique for reducing anxiety or improving performance. Rest begins to feel valuable only as far it helps us become more productive tomorrow, or improves our sleep score.
There is something deeply human about wanting to grow– but there is also a cost to making improvement the organizing principle of our lives. We risk spending so much time trying to become better that we fail to fully participate in the life that is already here. This tendency shows up in things we do, including in how we invest our money.
Most money is actively managed– people are consistently trying to figure out how to wring the most out of the capital, to figure out how to beat the market– how to optimize. Index funds, in contrast, give up on the idea of trying to be better, and instead try to just participate. Rather than beat the market, they focus heavily on decreasing the cost of participating in the market– recognizing that lower the fees of participation are, the larger the return is. Investing in an index fund will, over the course of one year, beat active management 50-60% of the time. At 10 years, the outperformance rises to ~80%, and at 20 years, it beats 90-95% of active fund management. Simply put, participating in ordinary market performance is a better option than trying to be better 19 times out of 20.
Index funds are a concrete example of the freedom that is available by letting go of our attachment to beating the average. They succeed because they abandon the game of trying to beat everyone else. Index funds can opt out of the pursuit of outperforming. Humans cannot so easily opt out of comparison itself. We are social creatures, and understanding where we stand relative to others has long been part of how we navigate the world.
This tendency to compare ourselves to others is a basic aspect of our nature– looking at ourselves in reference to others, and then assessing how we relatively stand. If we take this sorting as a given, it makes sense that we would prefer to be ahead of our peers, rather than behind. We would want to be more beautiful, rather than less so. Simultaneously, we all know that comparing ourselves to others is a reliable way to make ourselves feel miserable. We fear average, we fear mediocrity, yet at the same time, we can recognize that striving for superiority is a hole without a bottom. This leaves us in the bind of knowing that our instinct will lead us to unhappiness, yet not being able to stop ourselves; fighting human nature is usually a fraught proposition at best.
Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to let go of our attachment to being richer, prettier, smarter, faster, stronger without having to renounce wealth, beauty, intelligence, speed or strength. What if we could let go of the idea that we must be actively managing things, of our need to be extraordinary in some way. What life would look like if the defining questions were not about improvement, but about presence. If the overarching question we asked when we got up in the morning was “How do I fully participate in my life today?” rather than “How do I get better?” This question would force us to run towards places within us that we usually run from. We would need to embrace the fact that today we might feel anxious, annoyed, happy, jealous, or uncertain at times, rather than viewing those feelings as errors to be optimized away.
Superficially, this seems scary– almost repulsive. You are asking me to embrace the idea that I am nothing special– just ordinary? Yet I find it tremendously liberating to acknowledge that perhaps I am not so special. I too feel anxious, unsure, worried about my kids, and have feelings of inadequacy. I say stupid things, I hurt the people I care about, at times my best self does not show up. I procrastinate, tell white lies, and speak inartfully. So do you, your parents, your brothers and sisters, and your children. Being average means embracing the fact that we cannot escape this, and so rather than trying to convince others that we are not this way, or we are less this way than someone else, we just own the truth.
Owning the fact that we are remarkably alike does not mean I give up on the idea of trying to live a more honest life. It does not mean I abandon trying to minimize my mistakes, work to speak better, maintain my health, or love more fully. Instead, it means that I acknowledge within myself the same flaws and tendencies and insecurities that I see so easily in those around me, and that I readily acknowledge are a part of human nature. This is not human nature except for me, it is human nature including me.
Ironically, this embrace of my ordinariness is part of what allows me to effectively build bridges to those around me. I can empathize with those who feel disappointed in themselves because I too have felt disappointed in myself. I can recognize what it feels like to not keep up with those around me because I too have felt behind.
I previously wrote about how the way we define the opposite of something also defines the thing itself. When we say the opposite of love is indifference, we imply something different about love than if we define its opposite as hate. When we say the opposite of addiction is presence, we tell a different story than if we say its opposite is sobriety. The opposite matters because it quietly shapes what we believe the thing itself to be. In this context, we fear being average because we have defined its opposite as greatness, admiration, happiness, as being special. If average sits opposite exceptional, then average begins to feel like failure.
But we might have chosen the wrong opposite. What if the opposite of average isn't exceptional? The vast majority of us love imperfectly, worry about our children, lose our tempers, feel inadequate, procrastinate, and occasionally say the wrong thing. To believe that we somehow stand outside those experiences—that we are uniquely enlightened, uniquely broken, or uniquely exempt—is simply to lose touch with reality. The average human experience is not something to escape. It is something to recognize.
Or perhaps the opposite of average isn't exceptional at all. Perhaps it is alone. The center of a bell curve is where most of us live together. At its extremes there are, almost by definition, fewer companions. We spend so much effort trying to prove that we are different from everyone else that we overlook the comfort of discovering we are remarkably similar. The things that make us feel ashamed often turn out to be the things that connect us to one another.
The middle of a bell curve is where we find company. Statistically, that is obvious, but psychologically it's profound. If "average" means occupying the region where most humans live, then average isn't mediocrity. It's membership. We spend much of our lives trying to move away from the middle of the curve, believing that's where significance lies. Perhaps instead we should think about moving toward the middle, towards the place where we find each other.
Love,
Doc
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