Pizza!

Being vegetarian is hard. In fact, it's almost always easier just not to eat.

That was me at 2:30.

This was me at 3:45.

Ohhhh Yeah!!!!!

However, this came with a problem. The pizza's had pepperonis!!!

I know, like OMG!!! No way!!!

But really, it did provide an interesting thought.

Why did I take off the pepperonis?
Let me explain. I am a newly made vegetarian. I have no reasons to be vegetarian in particular. I simply decided to it.

So when I started the banal task of hand-separating each hot steaming pepperoni slice from the liquified, bubbling cheese, quite a few questions came up.

In fact, if you had been holding a microphone to my left temple, you may have heard the following

Why am I doing this?
After all, they are only a handful of pepperonis(Drool...). Nobody would know. Hell, I'm not even sure I could tell the difference. I don't think these qualify as meat. I've lost more than this skiing. 


No, I can't do this!


Why not?


...
Um...
My butt itches.

What I came to after much deliberation, is that I wasn't being rational. Which is strange. Not that I wasn't being rational, but rather that I caught myself at it. I mean, how often is it that you're doing something, and then suddenly go "Aw shucks, that was completely irrational wasn't it."

Well, I thought about why I couldn't eat the roonies, and figured out about fifty reasons, but there wasn't room in the margins so...you know...

I did find one reason that I found particularly interesting, however.

Perhaps I was avoiding mediocracy.

After all, don't we have a absolute aversion to being average?

The media hates mediocracy. After all, who is interested in everyday people? There can be no princess story if the prince had a potbelly and sent soldiers to save her. Lebron James wouldn't be a NBA star if he wasn't able to reverse cross-over dunk. Kim Kardashian wouldn't be famous if....wait a second...

But in all seriousness, there are plenty of ways to deal with being bad.
"It's all right John, there are plenty of people who are worse"
"It's all right John, it doesn't matter"
"It's all right John, everybody's good at different things"

Likewise, there are plenty of ways to congratulate being good.
"Your work has paid off!"
"You've improved so much!"
"Oh John, you smexy beast! You want to marry me? Of course baby!"

Ok...so maybe not the last one. But you get the gist.

Now what do you say if someone is mediocre?

"Oh John, that was great, but you still have another...nope"
"I really liked that John. I know he is better, but...nope"
"Let me give you a B for now...ouch"

What scares me are the implications.
How many opportunities have we given up on because we didn't want to be mediocre? It is usually easier to be at the extremes.

When I forsake the pepperonis, I knew that if there were fewer pepperonis, I probably would have left them on cause they wouldn't really matter. If there were more pepperonis, I would have forsaken the diet and just eaten.

Nope. There were just the right amount to irk me. Thank you Costco.

And thank you reader for indulging me in this rant. I ask you to leave a comment on this one about your thoughts on this. It is defiantly not a well understood problem, when it comes down to it, and I ask for inspiration more vivacious than pepperoni slices.

Sincerely,
John Chen