The average man

My name may be John, or Jim, or Paul. I am between 25 and 30 years old. I live in a medium-size city. I share a medium-size house with two colleagues from work, and one or two other people. Every day is the same, more or less. I wake up, have breakfast, brush all of my thirty-two teeth, take as much time as it needs to go to work with the public means of transportation. I spend my day at the office, lunch break excluded. Then, depending if it is Friday or not, I go to the pub or take the same way back home. Every other week I meet up with some fellow workers and have a pint of the black stuff. I take drugs regularly, not too much to be dependant, but enough to be high. I always spend the same on drugs, beer, clothes and food, every week. I am an average man.

I sometimes take a break abroad, with friends, or to visit my relatives. I sometimes have sex with strangers, at the back of an alley or back in my room. I have qualities and defects, but none of them is strong enough to make me someone special, to anyone's eyes. I am not tall nor small. My eyes have an indefinite colour, between brown and black. I have one or two white hair which I unhurriedly busy myself pulling out, every now and then. I never say one word louder than the other. Like everybody.

I do what everybody does: I go to the movies, to the restaurant, to the toilets; I get the Sunday Times on Sunday; I catch a cold every year; I do what's necessary on a day-to-day basis and have my annual meeting with my boss to see if everything's ok, and we both know that we could do without as we have all the answers before the questions are asked; I have a Starbucks membership card, I go shopping at Tesco and all my furniture are stamped IKEA. I do my twice-a-year medical check-up. I do the dishes only when absolutely necessary. I take turns to clean the bathroom. I pay my bills and my taxes. I don't own a car because it's useless; I never do anything out of the ordinary. I am an average man.

Once in a while I think of the past and the idea flashes past my eyes that I might have been someone different. In college I used to think I was different from the people I was studying with, that I was meant to do extraordinary things, meant to be someone special, someone dependable, able to live up my dreams. I don't know where and when things went wrong. It seems that, looking back, nothing went wrong. I graduated like everybody and found a place to work at and to live in. I was successful and everybody was successful and perhaps it is not that, nor the way I took, but it is what I did that was wrong. I should have been an explorer, or something. I never gave up my dreams, it's just that they didn't come true. I am like the next person in the street.

One day I looked up my name on the web. As expected, nothing came out of it: No images found on the web, No emails found on the web, No premium public records found on the web, No Amazon results found on the web, No news found. Yes. Just that. No news. I wondered if it was still worth putting capital letters to my name. If I had to move out, all of my clothes could fit into one suitcase.

Sometimes I feel like everybody is an average person. Perhaps it is only to find some comfort when night comes.

I am an average man because I never learnt how to despair.

I believe in the polls because they reflect what I think. I believe in a God-like entity but don't believe in the Church. I believe in wit while I have none. I believe everybody thinks “Can't be bothered” but actually do what they are told. I believe in the virtues of green tea and of the healthy option, but never take any. I believe in decision-making. I believe in Gandhi but couldn't have done what he did. I have more or less the same values as the next man. I could be the next man, but by some trick of fate I am not.

I am an average man, and perhaps will be until I move on to the next average stage of my life, have a wife and kids, a house, a mortgage, a car, a pet, responsibilities. Nappies, pushchairs, sleepless nights; birthday parties, Christmas parties, celebration days; arguments, tiredness, eyestrain. Some things will stop and some new things will turn up. And I will turn a blind eye to them and move on like the average man that I am. I may even keep some of my wildest dreams somewhere deep in my heart, where things sleep, for I am an average man.