Every material body in the world acts as though it wants every other body in the universe to be merged into it, so every material thing in the universe exerts a pull on every other material substance trying to drag it into itself. This leads to a natural conflict of which thing will be dragged into which but this is resolved by nature which favors bigger things to resultantly pull smaller things into themselves.

This pull by every material thing on other material things is what we call gravity, action at a distance, it is found in different degrees in different parts of the universe, being at its peak in black holes.

The Star of a Solar system being the largest object in that space, continuously exerts a pull on all the planets surrounding it, who also respond with their own pull, this is the major reason the Earth rotates around the Sun, the Sun pulls it towards itself, the Earth responds with its own pull on the Sun, the resultant force leads to the Earth rotating around the Sun because the Sun is a much bigger body. Either way it is only a matter of time before the smaller body collapses into the bigger. We have an estimated quintillion years before we collapse into the Sun.

The same gravitational pull is why you cannot stay in the air indefinitely when you jump, the earths’ gravitational pull on you brings you right down. This pull prevents any one from jumping out of the Earth, except there is human ingeniousness.

 

Rockets

Albert Einstein discovered a very interesting phenomena: energy is equivalent to mass (e=mc2), this seemingly simple concept has significant ramifications. Our insight on how to build nuclear bombs and how to defeat the natural hold of gravity, amidst others is based on it.

What e=mc2 really means is that an object with mass can produce energy directly proportional to the square of the speed at which it moves. This is why if you collide with a car parked by the side of the road, the car might get dented and you walk away scot-free, but if you collide with a car moving at 20 miles an hour, the car might just actually not be as dented as you will be. Why? Because when the car was parked it was not generating as much energy as it was when moving. The masses involved are the same, but the energy differential is predominantly determined by speed of motion.

This is exactly what we do to shoot rockets out of the earth, because the earth is much bigger it exerts a significant pull on rockets to keep them in the earth, but we defeat that pull by making the rocket move at a speed that makes it generate enough energy to negate the pull of the earth. But to attain to this speed, rockets burn so much fuel that would have been considered wasteful and a significant harm to the environment save for the benefits our civilization gets from what they deploy to outer space.

 

Mediocrity

There seems to be a natural force in the universe that acts like the gravitational pull but this time on human endeavors, it acts as though its goal is to keep everyone normal, not out of the ordinary, I called it the mediocrity pull. This pull must be defeated if you will attain to more than what is considered ok in your society.

Now, just as rockets seeking to leave the earth must burn significant amount of fuel to negate the earth’s gravitational pull, even so must individuals or groups of individuals who will escape mediocrity pull expend a significant amount of energy through their work rate to generate significant results at a pace that borders on the absurd.

The pace has to border on the absurd for two reasons, one, you will have to get results that just about everyone gets, surpass them, then get to extra-ordinary and you only have so much time to do so. Two, you are human which means you will get tired at some point and revert to a mean, so that if you revert to a mean in your downtime, your mean will be greater than others, provided you have been getting extraordinary results when you were in full throttle.

 

Obstacles

Our biggest obstacle to escaping mediocrity pull is ourselves, I am my own biggest obstacle and so are you to you, it feels weird to say but it is true that we are mostly what stands in our own way, the first reason you have not started on the journey you have been dreaming about all your life is you (majorly through all the good reasons you have to not start). You will first need to get out of your own way before you will be able to tackle other obstacles. How do you get out of your own way? Action in a specific direction is an underrated panacea to a lot of the psychological ills that plague us, simply start and when you do you will find yourself asking what stopped you from starting earlier – it was you.

Mediocrity pull is an “intelligent force” in that it acts in pernicious and sly ways, it recruits those it has defeated to aid it on its mission. Those you have to be scared of the most in this regard are your friends and family, for mediocrity “knows” they have a direct path to your mind and their words and actions will be instant hits if it can recruit them to its team.

The moment you start doing things that will lead you to be extraordinarily different from those around you, you will be stunned by just how much those close to you will act as obstacles. It is the rare breed of family and friends who have gone through similar journeys that will understand just about what you are going through, if you do not have such, unlucky you, you will either find new ones or ride lonely for a pretty long time.

The easiest obstacles to surmount are non-human, for by virtue of the intelligence we humans have been blessed with, all non-human obstacles are only a matter of time from being leveled.

 

What then?

The moment you decide to escape mediocrity pull you have chosen to break free of that which keeps most of the population fluctuating between scraping and just enough (I am not talking just materially). Such a goal requires work, a lot of it done constantly over time, you do not want to be the rocket that runs out of fuel midflight, howbeit you are more than capable of more than you know.

Greatness is not impossible, the universe is big enough to accommodate everyone’s ambition, being in the camp of those you admire is not impossible, you can do it and you will do it.

Thank you for reading.