I am everyday people.  So are you.

One of life’s difficult lessons is coming to grips with one’s station in it.  Most of us are regular folks.  It is simply delusional to think otherwise.  In our lives, weaknesses level strengths and deficits balance gains.  While it can be hard to admit we are average Joes and Joans, these we are, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  A movie icon once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Contentment is actualized with difficulty as each of us perceives self as greater than evidence allows and conceives satisfaction at the next level.  Discovering otherwise, the question “Is that it?” is a bitter pill, indeed.  Testimonials indicate that this feeling is manifest in bigger fish than us.

On the lone highway, we learn that achievements seldom equate to satisfaction but still strain at the lease for the next prize.  Mostly, it’s a participation ribbon.

The yearning for more, the next rung on the ladder, is parcel of the human spirit.  This innate desire can turn to good or evil, be an asset or a liability.  In either event, it tends to produce dissatisfaction in the individual though its pitfalls are well-known.

Other people don’t help.

If one ventures the correct thought that success cannot be summed in obvious achievements, the accusations of philosophizing and relative thinking are often leveled by those who got rocks.  When this appropriate assessment is cast aside, we trade eternal for temporal viewpoints and fail to understand that circumstances are unequal.  The unevenness of life conspires against those in unfavorable climes.  To the judgmental, I have been tempted to offer the adolescent quip, “Must be nice.”

I am no better and neither are you.  Though not all actions are co-equal, I agree with Paul that evil is present in our best deeds.  Add to this that the swift and strong don’t always prevail, and we have a perfect storm for discontent no matter the praise.

Most of our accomplishments are somewhere in between.  They are not great or terrible, they just are what they are.  A study once revealed that the most unsatisfied qualifiers were the silver medalists.  Almost- not quite.  The idea that they might have done better tortures competitors.    Jakob Dylan sang, “There’s got to be something better than in the middle.”  Most will not win silver.

Truthfully, all success is relative.  It is related to the starting points and negotiated terrains of each life and bounded by the will of God.  The eye is never satisfied, and no one desirous of riches ever says die.  We would like to think that ego is exiled in spiritual pursuits, but this is not the case.  Haughty spirits take falls all the time.

It's a test to admit we are less.  That we are unequal to our dreams.  Such thoughts are corrected in the knowledge that our desires are not always God’s will for us.  Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.”  We will never be satisfied if pride enters the picture.

In the grand scheme of the ages, you and I play parts but are not the whole.  We are ordinary, average guys and gals joining with one another to form a tapestry of other design.

Sterl