Experiencing Mediocrity

I am experiencing mediocrity. Yesterday I was cleaning out the toolshed, woodstove burning to warm me among all those mouse-eaten, sawdusty boxes filled with old papers from boarding schools in America and England, from Princeton and Harvard, reviewing my entire university transcript, old journals and notes, I read nothing of interest. I found nothing imbued with insight, and I saw very little art. What I saw was years of vanity and conceit, and ordinary efforts, nothing singular or rare. The profile of a privileged, rather unexceptional person emerges. It is me. I am depressing.

Not once was I singled out positively. Well, yes, I was. By some readers at Harvard. And there was an A on my thesis on Thoreau from a man for whom I have the highest regard; it was my sole academic redemption. Lots of Bs. A comment from a teacher on her disappointment in what she called "my elusive essay about Melville." I remember how disappointed I was with her grade and comment. I guess the best thing to say about it was that she had actually hoped for more, based upon my class participation. I did not come across my "Lock and Key Imagery in Ulysses" essay, though I only remembered it just now. Perhaps that might have perked me up, with its comment "the best essay about something non-extant that I've ever read" and its A. I did encounter my first Princeton essay, "Truth and Soul 323" with its "C+" and two comments about its being "very well written" and "I liked this essay" before the other foot dropped, the "But. . ." part. I saw several of my efforts in Art History, good, but never great, or so it appeared. I remember working hard on those essays, too.

Not once do I seem to be pointed in a special direction, and here I am, nearly forty years later, and "the more that's changed, the more it has stayed the same." I endure. My journals are not so entirely different and seem just as self-indulgent as ever. Am I my own harshest critic? I am living a rapidly expiring lease on a life that appears to be vanishing fast. This is my mid-life crisis time, to be sure. I have no purpose, aside from helping my wife and daughter, from amusing a handful of friends, from a few small volunteer efforts. I will never measure up to my dreamas of grandeur, though I have been surrounded by many--disproportionately many--who have proven outstanding already.

This is my self-assessment, at least at this very point in time. Yet I cling to the hope, however vain, that things will change, as I must in order to survive. I do not mean that I intend to quit and not try. What I say is this: I have yet to make my mark. I have no other choice. I must try, and try harder still, with more focus as there must be, with a sense of desperation in the air. Is there some way to zero in and redeem a misspent life, a life of illusion, of disillusion and unaccomplishment? How can I ever measure up? I must, I must, for myself, for my family. For people who believe in me, if they are still out there.