David Brooks calls it the “second mountain”, I call it “struggling with above average mediocrity in lieu of a mid-life crisis.” As my generation ages into their 30s and 40s, there’s a struggle — particularly among men — of how to deal with being “merely average”. I think it’s slightly worse recognizing you might be “slightly above average” in many things, but still not good enough to be great at anything.

Transcriptions for this episode are generated by automatically AI. A copy of the transcript follows.

1
00:00:00 ,000 –> 00:00:08 ,000
It’s probably no surprise that as people get older they tend to question their averageness, right?

2
00:00:08 ,000 –> 00:00:17 ,000
Sometimes I think about all of the people who have ever lived in the history of the world, in the history of civilization,

3
00:00:17 ,000 –> 00:00:25 ,000
and thinking about all of the things that most people did day to day that are completely forgotten.

4
00:00:25 ,000 –> 00:00:32 ,000
There are a handful of people that maintain sort of a vaulted status in our society.

5
00:00:32 ,000 –> 00:00:35 ,500
And a lot of them are the kinds of people that you would expect.

6
00:00:35 ,500 –> 00:00:46 ,000
Titans of industry like the Rockefellers or great rulers or great military leaders like Napoleon and that sort of thing.

7
00:00:46 ,000 –> 00:00:49 ,000
Queens, Cleopatra for example.

8
00:00:49 ,000 –> 00:00:53 ,560
But there are so many people who even get to positions similar to that

9
00:00:53 ,560 –> 00:00:59 ,240
Like there are plenty of presidents that most people have really never heard of or have almost no information about

10
00:00:59 ,240 –> 00:01:04 ,840
And I think about that and it sometimes depresses me a lot that there’s this

11
00:01:04 ,840 –> 00:01:08 ,880
lack of longevity to a person’s life and

12
00:01:08 ,880 –> 00:01:11 ,840
I think that I think about that more

13
00:01:11 ,840 –> 00:01:15 ,040
precisely because I

14
00:01:15 ,040 –> 00:01:16 ,640
Don’t have kids

15
00:01:16 ,640 –> 00:01:22 ,480
I’m probably not going to have kids if I do have kids. It’s almost certainly not going to be biological and

16
00:01:22 ,480 –> 00:01:25 ,760
as a result of my being an only child

17
00:01:25 ,760 –> 00:01:28 ,600
there’s something that bothers me about

18
00:01:28 ,600 –> 00:01:31 ,080
the fact that

19
00:01:31 ,080 –> 00:01:35 ,040
I’m the end of the line for this branch of this tree and

20
00:01:35 ,040 –> 00:01:39 ,780
genealogists would tell you that trees are very complicated and that branches

21
00:01:39 ,780 –> 00:01:45 ,300
have all sorts of sub branches and other things and that this doesn’t mean that this is sort of the end of

22
00:01:45 ,800 –> 00:01:49 ,780
the gene pool of my descendants are

23
00:01:49 ,780 –> 00:01:53 ,440
But at the same time it doesn’t feel great

24
00:01:53 ,440 –> 00:01:56 ,640
and I think about this too from

25
00:01:56 ,640 –> 00:02:01 ,120
An early age of my academics, right? Like I was always

26
00:02:01 ,120 –> 00:02:03 ,480
above average

27
00:02:03 ,480 –> 00:02:08 ,100
But I was never the top of my class. I was never the very top of my class. I was never

28
00:02:08 ,100 –> 00:02:10 ,600
the best at

29
00:02:10 ,600 –> 00:02:15 ,520
anything, except maybe, you know, here and there, maybe in elementary school, you know,

30
00:02:15 ,520 –> 00:02:21 ,600
I was the first kid in my third grade class to complete my multiplication tables.

31
00:02:21 ,600 –> 00:02:23 ,520
Whoop-de-doo, right?

32
00:02:23 ,520 –> 00:02:29 ,640
At the same time, I was 10th, or no, excuse me, 11th place in my fifth grade spelling

33
00:02:29 ,640 –> 00:02:30 ,640
bee.

34
00:02:30 ,640 –> 00:02:39 ,440
And so I feel like most of my life has been shockingly average, but only slightly above

35
00:02:39 ,440 –> 00:02:40 ,440
average.

36
00:02:40 ,440 –> 00:02:47 ,400
about how some people overcome this, right? David Letterman famously always had a scholarship that

37
00:02:47 ,400 –> 00:02:52 ,680
was offered to students at his alma mater at Ball State that was awarded only to a communication

38
00:02:52 ,680 –> 00:03:01 ,160
student, which he was, but also the most C average communication student because he himself was

39
00:03:01 ,160 –> 00:03:09 ,400
almost a straight C average student. And I don’t know that there’s a way that a person can overcome

40
00:03:09 ,400 –> 00:03:17 ,720
that, right? Like I feel like people can master certain things and we know a lot about mastery

41
00:03:17 ,720 –> 00:03:25 ,080
of topics or subjects or activities like athletics for example, or learning how to play an instrument.

42
00:03:25 ,080 –> 00:03:33 ,640
But it’s also true that a lot of people just don’t have quite what it takes for one reason

43
00:03:33 ,640 –> 00:03:39 ,400
or another, right? That, you know, to be a Michael Phelps-level swimmer requires that

44
00:03:39 ,400 –> 00:03:46 ,080
you have a wingspan like Michael Phelps, right? He has a biological advantage. And we can

45
00:03:46 ,080 –> 00:03:50 ,520
argue whether that’s fair or not, and I think a lot of people would argue that the equity

46
00:03:50 ,520 –> 00:03:55 ,600
of that is unfair, and inherently we should just sort of do something about that. I’m

47
00:03:55 ,600 –> 00:04:01 ,560
not one of those people. I tend not to think that it’s inherently unfair that some people

48
00:04:01 ,560 –> 00:04:06 ,180
have more money than me or that I have more money than other people or that some people

49
00:04:06 ,180 –> 00:04:11 ,440
are more physically attuned to certain things better than me than not.

50
00:04:11 ,440 –> 00:04:18 ,200
I think that the world has to recognize that sometimes there’s just luck, right place,

51
00:04:18 ,200 –> 00:04:27 ,400
right time, biological factors, economic factors, placement of things that just are in so many

52
00:04:27 ,400 –> 00:04:31 ,340
ways unfair but just the way they are.

53
00:04:31 ,340 –> 00:04:39 ,240
And as I’ve gotten older and I’ve gotten to a part of my life where I start working professionally

54
00:04:39 ,240 –> 00:04:45 ,500
with people, for a long time, for many years over the last six, seven, eight years, it

55
00:04:45 ,500 –> 00:04:53 ,120
has been really hard for me to think about how to make websites better, right?

56
00:04:53 ,120 –> 00:04:54 ,980
I make websites for a living.

57
00:04:54 ,980 –> 00:04:59 ,660
Now I sort of consult a little bit in a different capacity and I write for websites in various

58
00:04:59 ,660 –> 00:05:00 ,660
ways.

59
00:05:00 ,660 –> 00:05:02 ,660
And I don’t know how to make them

60
00:05:02 ,660 –> 00:05:08 ,120
World class right like I don’t I don’t I don’t know how to make them

61
00:05:08 ,120 –> 00:05:11 ,980
excel I can only seem to do about as well as

62
00:05:11 ,980 –> 00:05:18 ,060
It’s not budget right like

63
00:05:18 ,060 –> 00:05:26 ,620
There are some things in this world that no amount of money will make a big deal right you can’t take a small client or an author

64
00:05:26 ,620 –> 00:05:30 ,060
or an organization or something and

65
00:05:30 ,060 –> 00:05:35 ,060
and make them into a big deal globally known

66
00:05:35 ,060 –> 00:05:38 ,860
simply by virtue of a great website, right?

67
00:05:38 ,860 –> 00:05:41 ,900
There are so many other factors in that,

68
00:05:41 ,900 –> 00:05:43 ,660
including the team that they have in place

69
00:05:43 ,660 –> 00:05:45 ,300
and sort of the work that they do

70
00:05:45 ,300 –> 00:05:47 ,980
and where they do it and the geography of that.

71
00:05:47 ,980 –> 00:05:52 ,820
And that reminds me of this notion that Aaron Ren has,

72
00:05:52 ,820 –> 00:05:57 ,820
who’s a writer and podcaster here in Indy,

73
00:05:58 ,420 –> 00:06:00 ,900
where he talks about superstar cities, right?

74
00:06:00 ,900 –> 00:06:04 ,580
Where that there are places in the world like the London and New York and

75
00:06:04 ,580 –> 00:06:11 ,580
Hollywood and L.A. of the world where people there are just better, right?

76
00:06:11 ,580 –> 00:06:17 ,460
Not all of them, but that superstars in their fields will go to these places

77
00:06:17 ,460 –> 00:06:20 ,300
and just sort of be elevated to new heights.

78
00:06:20 ,300 –> 00:06:24 ,740
And I don’t know that a person can reasonably do that

79
00:06:24 ,740 –> 00:06:28 ,660
from within the confines of most other cities.

80
00:06:28 ,660 –> 00:06:31 ,700
Certainly every city has their celebrity du jour.

81
00:06:31 ,700 –> 00:06:35 ,060
Indianapolis likes to hang its hat next to Kurt Vonnegut,

82
00:06:35 ,