17. The Best Blog Post Ever

Exceptionalism: Noun, the condition of being exceptional.

Our society: Shitebags, glamorize the exceptional.

Result: Any time we’re not having an exceptional time (slash generally being exceptional), being left in a pit of misery, despair and feeling like our lives are a total failure.

OK, maybe a slight exaggeration.

Though as a society, we rate the extraordinary, don’t we? It's enticing, it grabs our attention. Hence the relatively recent explosion of shitty clickbait articles trying to reel us into their trap.

Yes, exactly like this one. Hi there!

Our intrigue with the exceptional is only natural really, I suppose.

On any given day, we’ve only got a limited amount of attention and cognitive space (very limited in my case), and as we spend our lives being bombarded by adverts, fake news, hashtags, TikTok trends, Love Island Memes, LinkedIn recruiters, people trying to flog Bitcoin, and generally far too much information for our poor little brains to take onboard, then only the (seemingly) outstanding will cut through the clutter, and pique our interest.

And we all know what piqued interest results in: clicks clicks clicks, likes likes likes!

Which basically means:

• For Media Outlets: Cash monies

• For our own personal social media accounts: Getting showered with attention… which, if you’re as needy and pathetic as me, can always be kinda nice.

So yes, money and attention. Two of our favourite things.

And as the reward for promoting the exceptional, then out of the billions of things that happen each and every day, we're exposed to a totally disproportionate amount of the extraordinary vs the mundane.

Routine tasks, boredom, frustration, feeling a bit meh and generally going through the motions can all be fairly standard practice, but tend to get weeded out across the various media outlets and social channels, as we get inundated with the exceptional.

It’s not often that we see our friends boasting about smashing the ironing, or a news headline stating “person works 9-5 day”, is it?

That's fairly understandable. However, it can arguably have some unintended, and pretty detrimental, consequences.

Firstly, if all we ever see is the exceptional, it can condition us to think that this is the norm. We can start to think that outstanding achievements and the infamous “Social Media highlight reel” aren't just the peaks of life, but are the basic standard that we should be constantly living up to.

This is, of course, bonkers. The exceptional, by definition, isn’t normal.

Before I start sounding like I’m campaigning for news channels and social media to be filled with content of people stuck in traffic jams, making calls to energy providers, or standing in queues at the post office, I should say that I don’t think overexposure to the exceptional is necessarily always a bad thing. It can have obvious benefits. In addition to it being enjoyable to consume, it can also be quite motivating.

I mean, who didn’t watch The Last Dance and conclude that ‘Operation Sort My Shit Out’ starts tomorrow?

However, the normalisation of the exceptional can have clear downsides.

Probably none more so than the "everyone else is totally smashing all areas of their lives, and doing so all the time" illusion it can create.

And of course, because we feel like we’re not, it can cast our supposedly more humble existence in a rather dim light.

You know how it is, we see someone who appears to be thriving in life, whether that’s a 24-year-old CEO, or our pals who have travelled the world, or a social media fitness influencer in outrageous shape, or even young parents with a settled family, and we can think: “Wow, they’re smashing [insert relevant area of life], they must be smashing all areas of their life... oh yeah, and be constantly happy and motivated doing so!”

We see a tiny window into someone else’s apparent success, and jump to the irrational conclusion that their whole life must be a total triumph… especially in comparison to our own more messy, stressful, difficult and challenging existence, where we’re just about limping by.

Again, hello dim light, flickering above our more humble achievements.

Bit of a shame really, as I can’t help but think that there should be a bit more wattage in that lightbulb.

Obviously, life's complicated. But I'd argue that there's a pretty simple rule that reoccurs in most areas: the more we do something, the better we get at it.

This means that being good at anything often requires a shit tonne of time, effort and energy. And as we all have a limited amount of those things, it’s basically impossible that someone can excel in all (or even many) areas in their lives, despite what we’re often led to believe via those trusty old sources such as news outlets and social media channels.

As Mark Manson states in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, most of us are pretty average at most things we do. And if we are exceptional at one thing, chances are that we’re probably average or below average at most other things.

So, if we go back to our 24-year-old CEO, then statistically speaking, they may, for example, not have the personal relationships they're after. Or our wanderlusting traveller may not have the financial comfort they desire. Or that fitness influencer may spend their life glued to their phone, and have an obsessive relationship with social media.

We don't tend to get sight of this side of things, though.

Nope, the small window through which we get exposure to other people’s lives can brainwash us into thinking that “smashing it” is everyone else’s default mode. And that a life of constant happiness, productivity and meaning is the norm, and that lulls, frustrations, setbacks, disappointments, and generally feeling a bit shit, are rare to non-existent.

In short, that a normal life looks something like this:

This graph isn’t just bad because of my sub-standard artwork, it’s bad because it’s wildly inaccurate.

Despite what the aforementioned reliable sources seem to indicate, life possibly looks a little more like this:

Yep, a fairly large percentage of life can be almost as unextraordinary as that graph itself, and we can spend a significant amount of time in that ‘Meh, alright’ middle section.

Getting exposure to exceptional news and achievements can obviously be a good thing. Who doesn't like seeing their pal get a promotion at work, start a new side hustle, or beat their 10km time?

However, despite these sort of things getting a disproportionate amount of the coverage, they’re more often than not the rare peaks in life, and not everyone else's default mode. Though overexposure to the exceptional can lead us to think the contrary, and that comparatively, we’re a massive failure.

Which probably isn't the best impression to have of oneself.

So, as opposed to beating ourselves up for not constantly being in a state of exponential growth, happiness, motivation and fulfilment like everyone else supposedly is, there may be some benefit in mitigating this with an acknowledgement that a relatively significant amount of life can be a bit of a slog, a bit boring, and generally dire content for Insta.

And on that, I’m off to cook some fairly bland chicken and veg, and then finish hanging the washing up.