Dear Elsa.
I have always been the sort of person who’s really ambitious and always goes for what I want. I have always considered this to be one of my better character traits. Unfortunately though, with many attempts at greatness comes much failure. And lately, I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am mediocre. Well, actually more that I’m just “above average” rather than “brilliant”, but there’s something about making that complaint that just seems bitchy.
How do I deal with wanting to be more than what I am? How do I keep myself from submitting to the desire of doing nothing to preserve the delusion that I have unlimited potential?
Scorpio
Dear Scorpio,
You are asking how do to deal with fact you are not a God and this is easier than you think. You only need come to understand that being a God is not desirable, considering you live here on Earth.
On Earth, real human beings relate to each other. The share their love, their pain, their successes and failures. And if you are a God, then what can you do? All you can do it look down on the rest of us and be superior! And which sounds better? Being a person who can love and share with others? Or being a super being who can only look down on the sea of the rest of us mortals unable to connect?
Being “brilliant” is not something you decide. It’s something others decide about you and you will be a lot happier if you can learn to just live. And this should be a fairly easy adjustment to make once you see that being a STAR is a figment of your imagination.
Because if you ever get there, guess what? You fall, or your fade is utterly inevitable! So the fact is the only way to be “great” is to be exactly as you are.
Good luck.
To be great be whole, don’t exclude or exagerate any part of yourlsef – Fernando Pessoa (portuguese poet, astrologer, etc)
Who you are is good enough – Carl Rogers -founder of humanistic psychology
🙂
I have struggled with this issue too. I’ve found this need to be special and important is based in lack of self esteem, so that’s what needs to be healed.
Treat yourself caringly and love youself with all your heart and intention, and eventually that will be all the attention you need.
It’s an amazing thing to understand that we are perfect if we are what we are, we have a role in the world just the way we are, and if we don’t act from the heart, and don’t love all that we are, we’re messing with God’s plan. We’re not being a light, just being in darkness. I hope this makes sense to you.
If you find this is making you unsatisfied about your life, seek a good therapist, because this is problably too deep to change easily.
Don’t worry so much about being mediocre, instead take care to do your best in your chosen field. If you want to be a great writer, read the great writers, study them, write, hone your craft, strive to write the best you can. And find pleasure, joy and love in it! Real art doesn’t just stem from suffering but from delight. The same goes for any other field you choose. Work hard and find joy in it and stop worrying so much about achieving greatness.
As a fellow Scorpio, I can definitely relate. I dislike doing things I’m not great at. There’s nothing wrong with looking at where you are in some aspect and deciding its an area you’d like to improve. Once you decide what you want, you focus and do what you need to do in order to grow in that area.
At the same time, I’m with Elsa and the others. You’re better off learning to give up that desire for “greatness.” There is no substance to it. Each of us is exactly where we need to be, whether we recognize it or not. Part of life is learning to appreciate and enjoy that while we also continue to learn, grow and change. If you find the things you truly love and enjoy and continue to work at them, you’ll find that you’ve found the real greatness you’ve been looking for.
I love that part in the movie Six Degrees of Separation,(correct title?), where Donald Sutherland is describing his amazement upon seeing his child’s classmates’ paintings when he goes in to talk to the teacher. He compares what he sees hanging up in the classroom, one brilliant piece after another, to some of the great impressionists whose work he has the job of selling. He asks the teacher how she extracts such genius work from them. She replies by saying that when they’re working on a painting, she merely knows when to take it away from them.
Each of us is born brilliant, and somewhere along the way we get programmed to let our “stinking thinking” interfere with our creativity, and many of us spend much time and money trying to re-learn how to “color outside of the lines”, get out of our own way, and live moment-to-moment. Finding the joy again. Wasn’t it Einstein who said that “imagination is far more important than intelligence”? Imagine that…!
Oh dear. Well, like the person in question, I am Scorpio with Virgo rising, and this really inspired me to write, because I do have some ideas about this and advice. First off, I would say that if you do “aspire to greatness” and feel you haven’t achieved it, then I have to wonder if you are barking up the wrong tree as far as the area in which you feel you should excel. That itch is there for a reason, and I don’t think the answer is to call it an unworthy interest and reject it, thinking that intellectually you’re going to feel better about being “mediocre”. What I suspect is that you don’t feel acknowledged for who you are, because as a Scorp you’re intense and theatrical and so engaged in life’s passion, and yet..what people see is the unassuming, inoffensive Virgo part of you, and it feels “off” that people don’t notice the depth under the surface. And quite possibly you are uncomfortable letting the Scorp play a bigger role in your outward behavior, because it’s visceral and you fear all hell will break loose, and that is NOT the impression your chaste Virgo wants to give. Here’s the advice: let yourself go, a little at a time if you have to, but let yourself be guided a little more by your passions, your intuition, and you will see that people notice a spark in you they hadn’t before. You will probably enjoy the recognition, and here all I can tell you is..for some people, appearances are important, and I think it’s wrong to say that it’s superficial in the perjorative way people do, because for you maybe ego stroking is…essential. If people want to brand you a loser with no self-esteem for “caring what people think” you have to ignore them. Acccept what is truly important to you, without judging, because actually getting what you want is the only way to feel you have gotten what you wanted!! For a nitpicky Virgo rising who looks in the mirror every day and hates her nose, finally getting a nose job is going to feel wonderful, while others would torment themselves about why they need something outward and superficial to be happy. It’s a funny combination: the depth of a Scorpio inside, and the superficiality of a Virgo outside, and they seem incompatible. Very Madonna/Whore, in a way. You need to integrate both parts to find your special spark that will make you feel like a “star” when people see both sides of you.
Good Luck, Scorp/Virgo sister!!
XO
I…can’t say as I’ve ever heard Virgo described as superficial before. and I would like to register my disagreement.
But everything before that point seemed well spoken.
I think pixiedust meant superficial as in “on the surface.” But I could be wrong.