ENEMY OF THE ORDINARY

“One machine can do the work of fifty men . No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man”.-Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)-A Thousand and One Epigrams

The Longman Active Study Dictionary defines the word Ordinary as:
1)Not special, unusual or different from other things.

2)It can also be understood to be unremarkable: not remarkable or special in any way, and therefore uninteresting and unimpressive.

I despise the ordinary, the ordinary never gets anything done. The ordinary is bland and is satisfied with just getting things done but not done properly.Many of us had parents that insisted that if we are going to do the chores they must be done to the best of our ability and not nonchalantly. Nothing in this world that has ever been worthy of recognition was done by an ordinary person. Persistence, tenacity and perseverance channelled by vision have been what has made impact in the world.

The seven wonders of ancient world, North America’s Mount Rushmore , Italy’s Sistine chapel , the great wall of China, The Sears and Petronas towers, the Sydney Opera house are all works of extra-ordinary men.

Beethoven,Mozart ,Handel were men whose music still influences performing artists today over 200 years later. Literary works by Alexander Dumas, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming ,Shakespeare and Charles Dickens are still relevant and several have been turned into motion pictures centuries after the fact.

Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Hannibal of Carthage remain some of the greatest military leaders in the battle history. Their battle strategies are still studied in many military schools all over the world.

Muhammad “The greatest” Ali , didn’t get to be the living legend he is today by being an ordinary boxer, he turned the “brutish” sport of boxing into an art form , displaying his unique talents in and out of the ring, fascinating both his fans and critics. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi were extraordinary leaders that went to astonishing lengths to make an impact on their nations. They saw a need for change and became they vessel for it, one can only wonder what the world would be like if not for such great men

Stand out from the crowd, think out of the box is my motto. So many people are miserable, stuck doing jobs they hate because they did the conventional like they were told, go to school, get a good job, save for retirement. There are so many people out there that could have been the next , Stevie Wonder, Michael Jordan Richard Branson or John Grisham but are stuck in the rat race, grinding away at that wheel, going no where slowly . How many people have within them that book they’ve been wanting to write or the business idea that they have been to afraid to carry out because of all the nay-sayers around them .

Yahoo, Google, Face book and You Tube are some of the biggest companies in the world today, with billion dollar net worth, three of them were started in college dorm rooms . Now their founders could have waited till they graduated college and settled for nice paying jobs and built a 401k, but because they took the road less travelled and now never have to worry about finances for the rest of their life, and guess what! they were all under the age of 30 when they hit their first million.

Many people have greatness within them but yet they are frustrated by their 9 to 5 jobs that give them no satisfaction but choose this life for the “job security” it offers them. As a creative person It is beyond me staying in a job that has me going over the motions day in day out. Such a life is the reason many people either commit suicide or loose their sanity. They hate their monotonous jobs and this starts a chain reaction that affects the rest of their life affecting their relationships, health and general well state of being.

DARE TO BE DIFFERENT, when the history books are open, only those that were extra-ordinary are remembered, even the exceptionally silly or stupid are remembered, nobody ever remembers the ordinary.

“Without the mediocrity of the ordinary, the excellence of the extraordinary can not be acknowledged”.

It is now up to the individual to choose where to belong