Monday, January 12, 2009

Me - In Percentages

A work acquaintance and burgeoning blog reader and fan gave me the following quote the other day.

"Simple minds discuss people
Average minds discuss events
Great minds discuss ideas"

The quote is most often attributed to Hyman (probably caught some crap for that name in grade school) Ryckover, former US Navy Admiral (to make up for all of the name calling). Reading this quote made me try to figure out if he was trying to imply something positive, negative, or none of the above toward me and the words I write here. Am I great? Yeah, probably, but I don't know if I would go so far as to say "great". Am I average? Also, yeah probably - I spend a ton of time thinking and writing about the events of the day or specific things that have affected my life. Am I simple? Definitely, but not all of the time. I've had a few less than nice things to say and write here and there about people that are on my mind.

If I had to break all of this down in terms of percentages, I would say that I spend about 20% of the time writing about ideas and 80% of the time being average or subaverage. Breaking down these percentages into just one word, I would say that I am graverage. Those percentages and letters almost break down perfectly, and it kind of sounds like gravy which makes me hungry and is almost always delicious. If I were super clever, I would come up with some sort of Venn Diagram with three circles for greatness, averageness, and simpleing and have them overlap in hilarious and insightful ways. I can just not picture it now...it would be hilarious if it existed.

The goal, of course, is to aspire to greatness and to be flush with ideas to share, but that is not always within reason. And in case you were unaware, doing so requires effort! What do you think this is, something I care about? You'd be right, but that still doesn't mean I'm capable.

3 comments:

Dan A. said...

"'Me - In Percentages' aka 'Not a Colinfest Post'"

Just to avoid confusion @ the beginning.

I'd say I am saverage.

AlexJD said...

the secret to good tasting gravy is to use the water that you just boiled your potatoes in (given that you are making your own gravy from turkey drippings and serving it with mashed potatoes)

Ken said...

See, this guy gets the blog. Many important things might be said, but what really matters is gravy and proper preparation of said gravy.