I didn’t want to post my own “creative” work here, but I guess I’ve always been a fickle person. I use “creative” loosely because it’s just an essay and not a colorful story or profound poem. Anyway, this is something that I wrote for my school’s literary magazine. For some reason, all my entries have been essays. Color me surprised.
Peanut Butter People
Mediocrity is lame, but not lame in the high school vernacular type of way; rather, it is lame in the purest sense of the word: handicapped. Mediocrity impedes its prey from doing anything of value. Of course, we are all the victims of this tyrant. There is simply no way that we bring it upon ourselves. Our species is bereft of indolence and idleness: those are qualities of koalas and sloths. We are human! Our very nomenclature signifies righteous power and immaculate DNA.
Day by day, the average human must overcome many a difficult task. Opening a new jar of organic peanut butter; taking a dog outside to pee; lying to a friend about how good her snakebites look. Each is a heavy weight that we must bear. Such trials! Such tribulations!
It is but a miracle that some of us make it to the ripe old age of twenty-five. But even then, only pain follows. Life is one big test. To receive a C in a class, there is point in which we must try and try and try and try to do well, and alas! study– to a certain degree, of course. Why, with handling school and opening jars, and lying to friends and taking out dogs, there is hardly ever any time for, say, reading and art. There really is no point in excelling in such asinine endeavors. Why should we read or draw? Their effects are neither tangible nor lucrative. And anyway, only weird people possess these peculiar penchants. Reading for the sake of knowledge and creating art to make the world a more colorful place, these are some really hippie notions. It’s not like we even have time to think about pursuing these things. In addition to our busy days attending to diurnal chores and nocturnal festivities, we are plagued with the beast of mediocrity.
This disgusting disease (which as previously stated, is absolutely not the fault of ourselves) feasts on our brains. It bullies us into believing that we are not capable of doing extraordinary things in this very intimidating world. It cultivates the notion that there are other people taking care of the artistic realm. It tells us only the truth. As humans we have a duty to make this planet as productive and industrial as possible. For that same reason, we pay stock brokers and CEOs so much more than we do writers and painters. There are essential duties which must be performed, and those who complete them deserve all the gold and diamonds they mine.
The truth is, however, that the scribes and the scribblers do not care about money, for they live not in the same dimension that we normal humans inhabit. They live in an eternal state of Woodstock: their rewards are “happiness” and sunshine and rainbows and unicorns and leprechauns. Ha! Happiness in the form of anything not monetary makes me giggle. Maybe one day they will learn that life is not a canvas, and that we are not artists. I hope, for the sake of our humanity, that their bubbles may burst, and that they may come to realize that all those crazy, lofty goals which they have set, and all those crazy, lofty ambitions in which they have excelled, amount to absolutely nothing but one great waste of time. And time is money!
Is there a spoon? 