Peter Lyons: Being part of the masses has its upside after all

Opinion

This seems to be a year of premature death for celebrities. This is not an uncommon phenomenon but occasionally there are clusters that strike a chord. Maybe mediocrity is not such a bad thing. Striving for status and glamour may be dangerous to your health.

I have never been glam or an overt striver. I was not blessed with stellar good looks or exceptional sporting prowess. I looked 60 at the age of 18 and am only now starting to grow into my face.

I grew a beard before that French rugby player made them sexy. People said I looked like Rolf Harris before that could get you arrested. Once a lady at a party pulled my beard thinking it was fake. She was left with a clump of red follicles. I shaved it off when a friend remarked that she thought I had mange.

I realise now, when I am well into middle age, that being part of the mediocre masses may actually be a blessing. I don't pine for lost good looks because even as a baby I had a big head, knobbly knees and jug ears.

I don't bore people at parties with stories of my glory days on the sports pitch. The teams I played for struggled to field a full team even with younger sisters taking the field and one winning player of the day.

I was never an All Black because the last skinny, blind, white guy from Wellington who played fullback for them stuffed it up for the rest of us. But at least that meant I didn't have to experience the post-career comedown that many great sportsmen often endure. It must be extremely tough having been a sporting legend only to be discarded for a younger, newer star by the age of 30. I don't pine for frustrated career ambitions because I never had many. I just muddled through like most of us who constitute the mediocre mass of our society.

Maybe mediocrity is not such a bad thing because, by statistical definition, that is where most of us must belong. We live, love, work, play, breed, accumulate and generally try to live as good a life as our circumstances and personalities permit. We are not destined for greatness. We are not burdened by the prying eyes of the media and countless multitudes eager to learn of our every antic.

No one is ever going to take covert snapshots of me, cavorting topless, on a beach at a ritzy resort. Wills and Kate may be the most glamorous couple on earth but their lives are lived in a very public gilded cage. At least I get to wear the same clothes two days in a row, sometimes three.

We are taught to strive to be the best we can. There is nothing wrong with this message. But we can't all be winners and often the winners experience very hollow, depressing and lonely victories.

We live in an age where work is meant to provide a large sense of meaning and worth in our lives.We are told to seek meaning and fulfilment in our careers. This is a secular, new age ideal. If such a message had been preached to the aristocracy of just a few centuries ago, they would have thought it mad. Work was for the working classes.

It is difficult to see how working on a conveyor belt canning peas, or emptying parking meters, could provide a sense of meaning or personal identity. At least I get to teach neoclassical economic theory to students who hang off my every word. There is nothing more satisfying than a well-drawn supply and demand curve.

We live in the age of the celebrity. Fame is meant to be a passport to the good life. Thousands of mediocre wannabes bray their soulless tunes to cynical talent show judges in the hope of gaining entry to the celebrity stables. Their desperate clamour is often an offence to our auditory and visual senses that makes viewing Campbell Live almost appealing. The reality is that few of us will achieve celebrity and the evidence is very clear that such status does not guarantee a good life.

Peter Lyons teaches economics at St Peter's Colledge in Epsom.