The Night I Searched "How to Accept Being Mediocre"

Lights out in the dormitory. I lay in bed and typed three characters into my phone: mediocre. Then I deleted them and typed: how can an ordinary person accept being mediocre. Deleted again. The screen went dark.

That was a night in my senior year of high school. I had just watched Oppenheimer, the man who moved between quantum physics and Sanskrit poetry as if knowledge had no borders for him. I held myself up against that image and found every flaw: I stalled when trying a problem a second way; words I had memorized a week earlier looked foreign again on a blank page. Some people are born different. That thought wasn't an idea; it was a physiological confirmation, like a thermometer beeping against your forehead, telling you: you're here, they're over there.

That night passed. More than a decade later, I'm writing these words on another night, past midnight by the clock on my screen. On the desk sits a draft I haven't finished editing; beside it, a white ceramic cup of tea that's gone cold. I didn't bother reheating it. Between those two nights lies a very long road, and I'm the one who walked it. I took the feelings from that night apart, crushed them, and grew something new out of them, not necessarily useful, but if you have ever searched for similar words after lights out, maybe these lines will save you a few detours, or at least let you know someone else walked ahead.

The conclusion is that life has only two modes.

The first is called ranked mode. You have a talent stat. It might be high or low, but you will always run into someone with a higher number. Ranked mode has clear wins and losses, continuous seasons, and every season ends with points gained or lost. As long as you are alive and still at the table, seasons do not stop. After the college entrance exam comes university; after university comes grad school; after grad school comes job hunting; after job hunting comes promotions; and after promotions come other people's promotions. Someone else's promotion is your point deduction. The problem with this mode is not competition itself. Competition is neutral. The problem is that it has no finish line. Seasons keep coming, rankings keep shifting, and you are always just a little short.

The second is called creative mode. It does not require talent; it gives you nothing but a bowl at the start. Think of it as the donation bowl at a temple gate, or an open guitar case in a subway tunnel. Anything works. The rule is simple: stand there holding the bowl, and spin it. Keep spinning long enough, and someone is bound to toss something in on a whim, a coin, a business card, a "that's interesting," or even just a second glance. Toss enough things in, or one day someone with a heavy hand drops something solid, and your bowl earns a name. Creative mode has no seasons; it only ends when you take your last breath. Until then, everything that lands in the bowl is pure profit. Your bowl can be cracked, ugly, lopsided, but as long as you keep spinning it, there is a chance.

In my first year of college, I heard a line from a senior student after a class whose name I no longer remember. He was fiddling with a ballpoint pen while he spoke. He twisted off the cap, and the spring inside popped out and bounced to the floor. He crouched and searched for half a minute. After he put the spring back, he said: "The best researchers aren't geniuses. They're stubborn grinders."

By "stubborn grinder" he meant someone who holds knowledge and conclusions in awe, respects fundamentals and substantive details, and wears things down through endurance and responsibility, day after day, year after year. No scholar ever got anywhere by floating on inspiration and talent alone; those are academic charlatans.

I believed him. So for all four years of undergrad, I did the things that stubborn grinders do. At the window seat on the third floor of the library, I would spread out three editions of the same book in front of me, with a cup of cold tea beside them. The margins were crammed with notes. Some questions I would write halfway and then leave with a question mark, only to draw an arrow back to them two pages later. I worked my way through everything in my field, from introductions to specific theories to empirical studies, anything even remotely related to my question. I scoured with my own hands. When people asked me "what are you looking for," I couldn't say; I would just say "I'm still looking."

When grades came out, the numbers on the transcript did not match what I had packed into my head. They were good enough to get me where I wanted to go, but far from impressive. I had no one to tell about that dissonance. Saying it would sound pretentious, not saying it left me choked. I just kept sitting at that window seat on the third floor, pouring out the cold tea and refilling it with hot, turning to the next page.

At my master's graduation, after I submitted my thesis, my advisor said to me: "You have got the strongest foundation of anyone I have seen in recent years." I didn't cry, didn't feel elated; I just nodded. Later I realized what that moment taught me: evaluation systems shift tracks. When you stop staring at the rankings and start focusing on "what have I actually understood," the world's standards for judging you quietly move. It's not that you have gotten smarter; it's that the referee switched to a different scorecard.

Then I went to a top-tier school for my PhD. To a stubborn grinder, a top school isn't a reward; it's a magnifying glass. It illuminates every crack you carry.

For the first two years of my PhD, I did one thing: I emptied myself. Not out of humility; it was a thorough, almost brutal reset. My reasoning was: since I am here, the old methods have reached their ceiling. To go further, I have to assume I know nothing and start over from scratch. The logic was sound, but I pushed it too hard. I zeroed out every past achievement, my undergrad foundation, my advisor's praise, those crowded margins, as if formatting a hard drive. I thought that after a clean wipe, I could reinstall the system. But people aren't computers. Formatting leaves behind fragments, and fragments surface in the dead of night, whispering that you are nothing at all.

For three months, I would show up to my office at nine each morning, delete two and a half of the three pages I had written the day before, then stare at the remaining half-page. I would leave at six, talk to everyone normally, still laugh during discussions. But back in my room, I would do a strange thing: I would rearrange my bookshelf over and over. The same row of books, first by color, then by height, then by publisher, until well past midnight, still unsatisfied, but too exhausted to keep going.

One day, I sat in my chair and didn't touch the shelf. I placed my hands open on my knees and just sat there for maybe twenty minutes. Then I opened my laptop and changed the document title from "PhD Thesis Draft" to "Things I Can Currently Confirm." Below it I wrote one line: "I don't know what I want to do, but I know what I don't want to do." Then I started writing.

Later I came to call that period "the spine-formation phase." Pushed to a dead end, asking myself over and over, breaking down repeatedly, feeling I couldn't hold on anymore, then picking myself up and putting myself back together, again and again. There is no shortcut through that gate; you have to grab your own scalp and drag yourself across. Once across, you find a sudden breadth in the world. There are no dead ends except the ones you impose on yourself. I didn't write that line to comfort anyone. I confirmed it at three in the morning, facing that bookshelf.

After the reset, I learned how to play creative mode.

The ability to empty yourself quickly takes practice. At every new stage, you have to be a baby, babbling, relearning the rules of the world, everyone's positions, the structures of interest, the levels of expertise. Shed your attachments, shed the mountain of old code from the previous stage, and accept everything you don't yet understand. This isn't humility; it's productivity.

I joined a team I trusted and started working on things I cared about. I stopped asking "can I win?" and started asking "what would this look like if we actually made it?" Then I discovered that creative mode multiplies.

I helped a friend organize his scattered notes into an article. After it was published, he took me out to dinner and said, "I have learned your method." Three months later, he told me he was using the same approach to help someone else. I don't know that other person's name, but our bowls are now separated by only two degrees of transmission. Since then, I have taken more people through the same journey, from "here's a bowl" to "someone threw something in," from "I don't know how to spin" to "spin it a little every day." I don't teach them conclusions; I teach them how to empty themselves out and, after rearranging their bookshelves, ask themselves "what am I really looking for?"

Everyone's spine grows on its own; you can't grow it for them. But you can tell them how you endured the pain, straightening your vertebrae one tiny adjustment at a time.

Now, when someone asks me what my core skill is, I pause for two seconds and say: "Empty myself quickly and start over from scratch."

The person didn't respond. I spent the rest of that afternoon wondering whether that answer even counted as an answer. But later I stopped wondering. It doesn't matter if it counts. What matters is that I actually do it, and I can keep doing it.

Back to your original question: after watching Oppenheimer, you feel ordinary, what do you do?

My answer is: you don't need to do anything. You only need to figure out which game you are playing. If it's ranked mode, you will always see higher scores, smarter people, faster walkers. If it's creative mode, whether your bowl is cracked or ugly, whether anyone throws anything in, depends only on how long you stand there spinning it.

Every field has its geniuses. The label "genius" is bestowed by others, and it can't carry you to any real destination. Those who actually make things happen are all self-acknowledged stubborn grinders who hold the real world in awe and feel gratitude toward everyone who ever tossed anything into their cracked bowl. In a grinder's eyes, there are only forerunners and latecomers; the gap is merely one of pace and depth of practice.

As for that night after lights out, when I searched for "mediocre" I rarely think of it anymore. But I know that kid is still there, searching, deleting, searching again. If I could reach back through time, I wouldn't lecture him. I would take his phone and type one line into the search bar:

"Hold the bowl. Keep spinning. Don't stop."