What if we are never “amazing” at anything?

  Ever since I was little, I’ve been the well-behaved kid. Polite, with grades between 70 and 90%. I was never a genius, but I was never part of the “troublemakers” either. And maybe that’s exactly why people started to have expectations of me. I don’t remember anyone ever saying they expected me to be the best, but my grades gave off that impression: “If he can get decent marks without really trying, imagine what he could d
o if he actually put in the effort.”
  The truth is, when I got to secondary school, I enrolled in one of the toughest tracks - science and technology - and only halfway through did I realize it made no sense for me. What I really wanted was to write books, not study molecules or cellular processes. Even so, I kept going, as if it were possible to spend a whole life walking down a path that suffocates us, just to live up to someone else’s expectations.
  When university admissions season came around, I realized that my grades - though decent - weren’t enough to get me into a top university. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was competing with people who had chosen easier entrance exams - which, obviously, makes perfect sense. But that didn’t stop the feeling of failure. I felt like I’d disappointed my parents, especially my father, who had always dreamed of me pursuing biology or chemistry. And I didn’t. And even though I know that what I chose makes much more sense to me, I still carry this fear: what if it’s all for nothing?
  What if, in the end, all my projects - the books, the blog, the ideas - are just that: ideas? What if I’ve turned down the safety of a “stable career” just to chase something that’ll never actually happen? Would it have been better to do what so many others do - pick something secure, even without passion, just to guarantee a place in the world?
  That’s where the fear of being mediocre creeps in. The fear of not being “amazing” at anything. Of not standing out, of having no big achievement to show for myself, of being just another face in the crowd. And that eats at me. Because sometimes, I don’t even know if the goal is really to be excellent… or just to look like it. We live in a world where everything seems designed to impress. Where “good enough” is rarely enough. But do we really need to be extraordinary at something? Or can we find peace in just being good, consistent, and happy?