If You Want to Succeed, Celebrate Mediocrity

Mediocrity stands out to mean a nice word - a word not very good and not very bad. People have said many things as regards mediocre, but I keep wondering whether mediocrity signifies lack of ambition to aim higher, even to the highest?

I remember passing through an institution with a bold inscription as its motto - Duc In Altum. In a plain language, what the school is trying to project is that though admittance is open to all qualified candidates, yet there is no offer of hope for the person who is so indifferent as not to want to get ahead in life, and who is not willing to pay the price.

To aim at the highest, there is always a great price to pay. Bishop Shanahan College, Orlu, Imo State, Nigeria occupies a strategic lace in the outskirts of Orlu town with two imposing architectural buildings that announce to all passersby the presence of a great institution. This is where I had the later part of my college life.

It is a school noted for its academic and moral excellence, which the teachers always try to force down the throat of all the students. The motto says, Duc In Atum (Aim At The Highest), yet not every student is in agreement with that. Many wanted a care-free life, others wanted to sit at the fence, whereas many more students never wanted anything at all.

Friend, no people, or nation succeeds with a government of mediocrity in power. My father was such a wise man. He was not able to decode my chances in life in a village school, and so decided to take me to a college, where I was trained to be a man, where I was called to a good age - the age of reason, knowledge and wisdom. I was taught not to celebrate mediocrity - mediocrity breeds failure, lack and poverty.

To celebrate mediocrity is to die unfulfilled. Fulfillment comes when one aims above mediocrity. Majority of the people I know today who worked against the school motto are living on the wrong side of life. The voice of truth sounds so low in many cases, only those that hear and heed its sounds are saved.

In the areas where you live, there are sounds of truth many of which are warnings, others are advice, while many more are persuasions, targeted to shape and mend your life. It is only left for you to make a choice, to be an achiever or a mediocre - the choice remains your own.