Vince Stone gets in touch with his inner underachiever.
Stop in at any bookstore these days and it’s apparent that the self-help section is a thriving oasis. There are countless tomes on losing weight, getting rich, lowering cholesterol, and generally being all that one can be. Flying in the face of this self-improvement onslaught is Vince Stone, author of Embracing Your Inner Mediocrity—Making Peace With Reality (Sterling Press, 2009). Stone’s basic message is, “Hey, you’re not ever going to make anyone forget Donald Trump so stop stressing out and enjoy your relatively insignificant existence.” Just how does an over-achieving Berkeley liberal embrace being just good enough? Not that that describes me, but as a public service to Monthly readers I rang the mediocrity guru at his small media supply business in Cleveland, Tenn. to quiz him on the subject. Afterwards, I took a well-deserved nap.
PK: How can Berkeley liberals embrace their inner mediocrity? What do they have to do?
VS: Well, I haven’t talked to a ton of liberals. We tend to be more conservative here in the south.
PK: Right.
VS: I understand overachievement tends to be a pretty common disease among the liberals. It’s tough there, especially in academia. You see, I’ve got a wife who is a classic typical overachiever. She’s got her Ph.D. and she teaches at a local university. And she is married to me. Now and some would say, “Well, you know, did she settle?” A lot of overachievers just never find that contentment space. They’re always pushing. If they’re at their job—and it doesn’t even have to be an academic job—they have to push for that promotion, just really stressing out over things that in the general picture are not that important. And some people just don’t see that. I say, “Look, you know, yes, you’re stressing out over your kid because he’s got a science project to do and it ends up you’re the one who’s going to do it for him. And there you are wasting your entire weekend building a volcano or whatever it is when it’s not going to matter. There’s a kid down the road who’s going to just put up some drawings of pictures he took of some cow manure processing over a week and he’s going to get an A. And he put in one-fourth of the effort you did on your kid’s project.” I’m all for achievement. I put overachievement as achievement wrapped with quite a little bit of greed involved. It’s having to be the best. It’s wanting more. From a conservative point, I see . . . the government . . . wanting to achieve something with health care, okay? But I think they’re getting greedy about it. They’re reaching way too far and it’s going to cause problems. We had this in the mortgage industry. People wanted everybody to be able to afford a home. They overreached. They got greedy with commissions and sales.
PK: So wait a minute, let’s see how is universal health care and greed, I’m not quite sure . . .
VS: I see it as greed on the part of politicians to take over much more of our economy than they need to, to fix this problem. I just think they’re really reaching.
PK: We’re going to get angry emails about this interview. What do you think would be the appropriate way to handle health care on the part of the federal government? Should we just extend Medicare to everybody and leave it at that or…?
VS: Well I just start thinking about all the money that they’re going to put into this new program. I think tort reform is a valid way to go. You see there’s another part, greed on the part of the lawyers, greed on the part of the people who have something that goes wrong with them, even greed on the part of the doctors. If there’s so much of that, it makes that a nasty mess. But of course, I am not the genius. I don’t have all these big highfalutin’ political answers to solve this problem. I just think they ought to take it a little slower.
PK: I’m sure some of the people who are going to read this or listen to this podcast may say, “Well, that’s a typical red-state kind of attitude but I think at the same time, I hear what you’re saying. You’re saying that people that are wanting to always be on top, the dark side of that is they’re greedy.
VS: I don’t want to equate greediness with achievement, okay? I’m all for achievement. I don’t want you to sit on your tail and not do anything. That’s just ridiculous. But there’s an aspect of moderation and contentment that this country’s kind of let go and that could be a problem. Of course now, there’s lots of things where my philosophy of accepting mediocrity is not going to work. I am not for having my heart transplant performed by a mediocre surgeon or having a plane landed by a mediocre pilot. If you deal with life-and-death issues, certainly pushing yourself towards excellence is the way to go. And of course, it doesn’t really work in the sports world either.
PK: You don’t want a mediocre quarterback of your NFL team but maybe a mediocre mailman, that’s okay.
VS: That is perfectly all right. He’s going to lose one or two letters a year.
PK: It’s almost like a Buddhist thing of the middle path, is that what you’re advocating?
VS: Well, I had never thought about it like that. But I do think that there is a place for us all because I’ll tell you, without question, even all of your Berkeley friends and your Liberal elite, there’s going to be something mediocre about everyone of them.
PK: Now that’s interesting that you say “Liberal elite”—Is that a common feeling where you are? I mean, you say Berkeley to somebody, does it just mean, “Oh, my God, what a liberal snob?”
VS: Well, we acquaint California as a whole…
PK: The whole state gets it.
VS: The whole state. Same thing with New York in the northeast. A lot of people call them Yankee Liberals. We’re not gun-toting incestial hillbillies. We do read. We do follow what’s going on in the world.
PK: You’re ruining my image of you guys.
VS: And I’ll tell you, when I see everything that goes on out there, like man all the taxes and everything that’s being heaped upon everybody out there, I’m surprised people aren’t leaving that state in droves. But you got great weather, I’ll tell you that. And it is pretty.
PK: Do you find that once you get beyond “Oh, you have an accent. Oh, you dress a little bit differently,” you have a lot in common with people at the end of the day even though you’re from different cultures?
VS: Absolutely. Now, in New York, I even mentioned this, whenever I was on television there, I said, “Wow man, you talk about a bunch of overachievers. I didn’t see any overweight people in all of Manhattan.”
PK: Really?
VS: Yeah! It was really weird. And then when you go to the common restaurants, they’ve got all the calories and everything and all the fat grams and this, that, and the other. Everything’s printed on all the menus, even at McDonald’s. You don’t see any of that down here. And then we go to Central Park and there’s this gigantic group out exercising, doing these hops and all the steps and the bikers and the joggers. It was crazy! And I’m like, “Wow. You don’t see this back home.”
PK: What about being mediocre and exercise? I know it’s a problem in the south but it’s a problem all over the country of obesity.
VS: Well, I think I look at it like this. You need to do some, okay? You need to get up and walk around the block. You need to stretch a little, this, that, and the other. But as far as getting those silly biking shorts like Lance Armstrong and the helmet and the outfit, oh come on. That’s not necessary. And it goes back to another keyword that I said before. It’s about moderation. You don’t need to eat the whole bag of potato chips. Just have a few.
PK: I guess maybe there’s the assumption that’s made at least by people out here that if you go to the south, that is every meal is fried? Is that true?
VS: I don’t know. People here like big consumption and granted, there are a lot more overweight people down here than in some of these bigger cities but it’s a lifestyle choice and people are happy. I saw a lot of those people in New York and maybe in San Francisco as well and they didn’t look very happy. They were walking around with a purpose. You shouldn’t get in their way and just don’t speak to them. You know down in the south, it’ll be “Hey, how are you doing?”
PK: Isn’t it very common too to just go to somebody’s house (without calling first) — just drop by. Do you do that all the time?
VS: Oh, sure.
PK: I would never do that even though I think it’s actually very charming.
VS: It is a different culture and I try not to be too sarcastic or whatever to my friends who live in the city and I just don’t understand their lives but they’re like, “I would never live anywhere else. There’s just so much to do.” And I’m just like, “Well see, to me, doing nothing is doing something.” I love to do absolutely nothing.
PK: When you get into doing nothing what are you doing? Are you watching TV or—?
VS: I’ve got a nice house on an acre of land with a little creek running down the side. And I’ll sit back there, I’ll have a nice cigar and read a book and to me, that’s doing nothing. It is therapeutic after I come home from a day of work.
PK: We would expect somebody from a small town in Tennessee to write a book about embracing your inner mediocrity.
VS: I’ve done it, man. I’ve done it. The bookstores are full of stuff that really cater to “You can be great.” Or was it Good to Great? Think Like a Champion. All these other kinds of things saying you can do this, you can do that. My book says, “Hey wait a minute. Who are we kidding?” Do you know what I’m saying? I’m like, “Look, it’s not going to happen for most of us.” So rather than get down on it, I’d accept where you’re at and make peace and try to achieve some happiness.
PK: That’s great that you have an acre of land and a beautiful creek and you can sit on your front porch. But if you live in a big city or something, you’re not doing that. You’re going to go out and if somebody’s playing loud music out of their window and there’s garbage —where is the opportunity to do that when you’re living in that kind of a hard-edged environment?
VS: I know it’s a struggle. They have to work at it. I need to come up with an “Embracing Your Mediocrity Seminar” and have people come in and go through a 10-step program like [Anthony] Robbins does. Instead of walking across hot coals I’ll have them come up with something else.
PK: Speaking of cultures that have embraced their mediocrity, “60 Minutes” did a big piece about Denmark being the happiest place in the world. They don’t have all these great goals. They’re not all thinking they’re going to be president or whatever. They’re really content. And of course, grad school is paid for by the government and daycare is free. They have all these really high taxes that go along with it which most Americans probably wouldn’t want. That’s the classic American thing, “Hey, I want my government to do all this stuff but I don’t want to pay for it.”
VS: Yeah. Like tell [me] where my all my taxes go.
PK: I grew up in Oakland and Berkeley. I was going to play for the Raiders, man. When I was a little kid that was seen like a reality. Your parents kind of laugh and look the other way.
VS: I actually talk about that in the book. How do you handle it when your kids are going off to fulfill this pipe dream that they have? Do you dissuade them or do you show support? And my whole thing was “Look, these kids are going to learn the hard way and you’re best to just roll your eyes and wave and hug them while they leave the driveway and just say, “Look, okay, you’re going to L.A. to be an actress, and it’s not going to happen. We’ll keep your room ready and we’ll see you in a year or so.” So same thing goes for even me. I had no aspirations that this book would become a bestseller or anything else. I wanted to sell a modest amount and kind of get my name out there and have some fun and then maybe I might get asked to write another book. That was, I thought that was a pretty achievable goal.
PK: Yeah, I mean in a way, your success with this flies in their face of all your theories.
VS: I know.
PK: Are you completely against New Year’s resolutions?
VS: No, I’m for making them realistic. Like don’t make them a pipe dream, make them a dream plan, okay? That’s my two words.
PK: Well what does that mean?
VS: A dream plan is like okay, I want a 42-inch high-def television before next football season. That’s a dream plan. You make that happen. You know, 14 or 1,200 bucks, you’re going to be good to go. Whereas if you say, I’m a six and I want to marry that 10 at the workout club. You know, that’s a pipe dream, buddy. It’s not going to happen. Or I want to invest a thousand dollars and get $10,000 return from my friend who knows a guy. That’s a pipe dream. You’re going to lose that money.
PK: How much of what you’re talking about has to with us as a culture still sort of caught up in this materialism and keeping up with the Joneses?
VS: That’s a big part. It rolls back to the word contentment which is my underlying little stream of truth that runs through what I write. Even though it’s funny and yes, he makes fun of overachievers who do this and he makes fun of these other people, it’s about contentment. And sometimes, even though I strongly believe all this, I have to fight some of that sometimes.
PK: I guess it really gets into how do you define happiness. I mean, how do you define happiness?
VS: Right, right. Well, you see that’s a very, very personal question that I can’t certainly answer. You kind of stumped me. How would I fix health care? What? How do you define happiness? Only a Berkeley guy would ask me these kinds of questions.
PK: I’m sorry, Vince. I didn’t mean to get so deep, man
VS: I define happiness as the Dallas Cowboys beat the 49ers.
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See more of what he is up to at http://thekilduff-file.blogspot.com.
Age: 45
Birthplace: Roanoke, Va.
Astrological sign: Libra
First job: McDonald’s
Planet I’d emigrate to: Saturn has always been my favorite, although a bit on the cool side.
Extinct species I’d like to be reincarnated as: What’s not cool about a saber toothed tiger?
Website: innermediocrity.com
