A couple of weeks back, I was easing into the day, enjoying the peace before the rest of the house began to stir.
Skimming through the newspaper on my phone, I stumbled into an article that nearly made me choke on my morning coffee.
According to this piece, researchers at University College London found that the key to happiness lies in settling for mediocrity.
Read that again: the key to happiness lies in settling for mediocrity.
Mediocrity. The key to happiness? I know! Crazy, right?
The research tested groups of people to find out what induced happiness. They discovered that—brace yourself—happiness followed ‘when the outcome of a situation was better than expected’.
Who knew?
And, not content with that paradigm-shifting discovery, the researchers even developed an algorithm and an iPhone app to prove it!
What made me nearly choke wasn’t the finding itself (earth-shattering and choke-worthy though it surely was, at least according to the article), but the recommendation that followed: in order to be happy, you should set the bar of expectation nice and low.
Nice. And. Low.
Think on that for a moment: if you want to be happy you need to lower your expectations.
From what I read, if you’re meeting friends for a meal, you should pick a low-grade joint rather than your top-end favourite restaurant. According to the research, your expectations of the top-end restaurant will be so high that disappointment is inevitable.
Basically, if you stand six feet tall, don’t reach for the stars, reach for something that’s a maximum of six feet off the ground, and you can’t lose.
But here’s the thing with that approach: you can lose. In fact you can lose everything.
Imagine Thomas Edison thinking to himself “Well, Sir Humphry Davy couldn’t get it to work, and it didn’t really play out for Warren de la Rue. So, as much as I’d like to have a crack at making a lightbulb, I think I’ll just stick with this candle. It’s not ideal, but it’ll do.”
What if Tim Berners-Lee had thought “I guess it could be kind of cool if there was something like a world wide web. But, heck, you get yesterday’s news in the newspaper, and the postal system isn’t such a bad way to keep in touch.”?
And what if you convinced yourself that the world didn’t really need the best version of you?
What if the interpretation of your life that you find yourself trapped inside isn’t really that bad, after all?
What if you convinced yourself that, instead of reaching for the stars, you should pick from the low-hanging fruit?
If you did those things, would you die happy, believing you had lived the life you were made for? Or would you take a sense of regret, of missed opportunity, of “what if?” and “if only” into eternity with you?
You are meant for more, not less.
You are meant to soar with eagles, not wade through the quagmire of mundane existence.
You are meant to raise the bar of expectation to new, yet to be discovered, heights, not drag it to the depths of what has always been.
You are a sojourner, not made to settle, or accept mediocrity as your companion.
For you, happiness—real happiness—does not lie in the achievable, it lies in the unachievable.
For you, happiness is not to be found in the outcome—the destination—but in the adventure towards that place on the horizon where the world is as it should be.
Don’t be duped into existence. Never lower your expectations. Always reject mediocrity—life is an adventure to be lived, not an algorithm or an iPhone app.
