4. Is the average life worth living? Or do you have to do something extraordinary to justify being alive?

Our group had a very difficult time with the idea of an "average" or "ordinary" life. Several people vehemently held that "No one is average. Every life is special." To me, this pointed out that the words "average" and "ordinary" have become so negatively loaded that many of us can't imagine applying them to anyone. I am reminded of Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

Nonetheless, there really is an issue here. The great majority of people who show up for discussion groups at Unitarian churches are getting by reasonably well. They are holding down jobs, paying bills, raising children, and/or doing whatever else is necessary to keep everyday life flowing relatively smoothly. They are also aware that certain other lives seem more heroic, and most people have some sort of chuck-everything-and-join-the-Peace-Corps fantasy.

How are we dealing with the fact that we are not all Albert Schweitzers and Martin Luther Kings? The great majority of us will never win a Nobel Prize, write a best-seller, receive a Congressional Medal of Honor, explore Jupiter, get an Olympic gold medal, or do any of the other "extraordinary" things we might have thought about when we were teen-agers. Is that OK? Should it be?

Discussion Aides

The Broadway musical Pippin is about a young man thinking these issues through. If you can get hold of a soundtrack, play the song "Extraordinary". Part of it goes:
Patching the roof and pitching the hay
Is not my idea of a perfect day.
When you're extraordinary, you've gotta do extraordinary things.
I'm not the type who loses sleep
Over the size of the compost heap.
When you're extraordinary, you think about extraordinary things.
Every so often a man has day he truly can call his.
Well, here I am to seize my day, if someone would just tell me when the hell it is.

"When we get sick, we want an uncommon doctor. If we have a construction job, we want an uncommon engineer. When we get into a war, we dreadfully want an uncommon admiral
and an uncommon general. Only when we get into politics are we content with the common
man."  Herbert Hoover