Our Obsession with Extraordinary: a love letter to humanity

My Mother’s embrace can be easily described as a Faraday cage. Protecting her children with her love while she patiently waits for something like a ray of sunshine to revive her whole being. She opens up the locks and trips over her unwilling feet into the red brick chamber.

Her green eyes which have now dulled some begin to water as she turns off the sirens of protection. Irony at its finest. One loosie. 

Her first customer of the day. The week has begun. 

Mondays. 

~~~~

I wanted to be a writer and dancer growing up. When I was around 8 or 9, I turned my room from a pink Minnie Mouse theme to blue and white clouds all over the place.

From the walls to the bedspread and curtains - I was in the sky. 

In those clouds, I would write poems I got off the internet.

Many of them were inappropriate and nothing I should have been exposed to as they were basically about sex but I just appreciated the chemistry of words.

I dreamed about living in the city and studying at NYU, performing slam poetry and dancing to the lyrics of my song as my graduation project.

I didn’t picture getting a fancy award but I did see myself feeling like I was floating on cloud nine, the place where my inner child and future self…. Connected.

None of that happened though.

My Mom told me I had two options. Medicine or Law school.

You see my Mom was raising 3 kids on her own and worked over 80 hours a week in her business - a corner grocery store in the projects.

She was open holidays and snowstorms. She would come home with her feet the size of footballs. 

I remember the moments she would ask me to help pull her socks off and would see the indentation marks on her ankles from all the swelling.

In my mind, I can still hear her screech from the shoulder pain as I helped pull her shirt off. 

Years later, I would learn it was inflammation from having to lift gallons of milk into grocery bags all day.

My Mom would always say I don’t want you to live the life I am living.

So….when this woman spoke – I listened.

I figured law school would require too much reading, so I went with medical school instead.

There was no family meeting. There was no discussion.

The only goal was to become part of the elite. To stand out of the crowd. To be somebody.

Anything less was unacceptable. Anything less was a joke.

My mother’s desire for her children to live beyond the ordinary became my obsession.

I became obsessed with aiming for the extraordinary, 

Aiming for someone else’s form of excellence - and it cost me a dream.

Some of us have become so obsessed with the extraordinary that we now believe we’re entitled to it.

That if we want it, we deserve it.

& That without it - what are we even doing? What’s the point?

We are obsessed with the extraordinary and slowly killing us from the inside out.

One of those deaths by a-thousand cuts situations.

It’s why we continue to question our enoughness no matter how many times we are reminded we are whole.

We scrutinize the image we have of ourselves, our experience and grading who we are as a person because of this external point of reference and considering the meter of measure 

extraordinary.

This obsession is not obvious. 

It’s silent. 

It doesn’t make you want to triple-check check the stove was turned off properly.

It’s low-key intrusive. 

Sneaky.

It lingers in the undercurrent of our minds. 

It’s invisible, and subtle but packs a punch at the same time.

We look at extraordinary as something beyond us BUT at the same time, we use it to create belonging amongst one another.

It becomes this tango of a goal to stand out of the crowd but belong with the crowd at the same time.

And then we wonder why we feel stuck. Fighting to be in a place that doesn’t actually exist.

Let’s start with the most obvious place to examine this obsession - social media. 

The amount of energy spent on the focus to go viral or round up a massive following is WILD.

Quite literally getting lost in the metrics instead of our message.

Or aiming for that pivotal million-dollar business without understanding what that would really mean for our life, our family, or why we would even want it.

Too often we hear of people building seven-figure businesses that they end up hating. Time freedom is no longer in sight and the container they’ve built has now become their prison.

We have become so entrenched in a battle of comparison to the competition in our efforts to become extraordinary, 

that we lose ourselves and our mission along the way.

Let’s look at the good ‘ol imposter syndrome.

We default to a psychological phenomenon when we come up against our ideals, visibility or how we want to show up. There is review after review - 62 studies in fact saying the same thing about the prevalence of imposter syndrome.

In 2020, Up to 82% of graduate and college students from a variety of industries suffer from imposter syndrome. 

Symptoms include psychological distress, anxiety, depression, burnout, exhaustion, avoidance of high-level or demanding tasks, rigid thinking, and dismissing positive feedback.

Yet we continue to point the finger at the person as a problem, not the poison.

The hidden obsession.

That doesn’t feel like an obsession at all.

It feels like a welcomed compass in which we need to guide our life or aim our goals towards.

It’s the hidden obsession that has also convinced us the feeling of success is fleeting.

The feeling of success is not fleeting. You and I both know it’s a definition away.

But away we let it go - away from our mental grasp.

We have also decided that winning is the only thing that matters and has normalized the belief that being “lonely at the top” is the consequence of success and to be disconnected from community is necessary to get what we want - to be part of the extraordinary.

& To those who are parents or taking care of the next generation - our good intentions of wanting to give the best to our children is simultaneously propagating generational debt as we set our sights on these expensive ass Ivy league schools & shiny cars.

And, unfortunately, in that pursuit to beef up the applications for said institutions, the addition of  all those activities that they dont even want to do but know they need to stand out in is contributing to mental health issues like anxiety, eating disorders, depression & suicide attempts.

People are sitting in their offices, walls filled with plaques - quite literally feeling like a fraud because they don’t feel as successful as what their resume says or what the wall represents.

After all the degrees and certifications they go home unfulfilled because they chose the job for salary and status, for the extraordinary, not their passion or purpose.

These unfulfilled humans are now breeding grounds for anger, resentment, and frustration in marriages and homes.

Breaking generational cycles only to start new ones.

People are burning out across industries in the pursuit of the extra - 

Burning themselves to the ground in effort to prove their worth in metrics of money & productivity or how many people they can impress & make happy.

Business owners and corporations are veering away from transparency, hiding their mistakes & incompetencies to save face with their audiences instead of doing what is required to repair connection and community - because we know it’s okay to be human but only when we are an exceptional human.

Peers & colleagues throwing each other under the bus or stealing each other's ideas so they are perceived as having the answers and unique solutions to plans and problems..

Oh  - and Let’s not forget the race to space instead of using those resources to brainstorm how to create healthcare for all or maybe, just maybe, make a dent in world hunger.

In this race to be the best, the fastest and the first - to be amongst the extraordinary - 

humans don’t really get to learn who they really are, 

problem solve in a way that matches their capacity, 

Adapt,

be creative,

& make mistakes willingly.

We are constantly resisting the human experience in our obsession.

This obsession with the extraordinary is suffocating our ideas before they can even breathe.

What if we are already living in our extraordinary? 

What if living in our own ordinary is the extraordinary - NOT in the pursuit of it?

What if the obsession is missing that entirely?

What if …we need to re-imagine our relationship to ordinary?

What is it exactly about being ordinary that prompts this internal disgust? 

That makes us want to look away and think…ew.

Now - I’m not claiming being basic is the answer to all of our problems or that I have any actual answers to this upbeat letter of mine.

because I do know that there is value in striving for excellence, of course, however defining that for ourselves is key.

And that may look different depending on the season you are in.

I want to call for a breaking of our obsession with the extraordinary - to take back our humanity - to be who we really are - who we are meant to be-  be where our feet are - have that be our default.

A calling to become more of our human selves and redefine ordinary or… reimagine ordinary.

I myself have been trying to recalibrate my standards but it’s hard -not knowing the line between what’s really mine vs. what my conditionings have led me to believe; but I’m steadfast on a journey of creating and becoming my own point of reference - I like to call it becoming more Maverick Minded.

So - I wrote these words to tell you - in an attempt to save our humanity, I think we need to opt out of our obsession with the extraordinary.

So, I invite you to consider…

What do you need to opt out of to get free?

With love,

Crystal