Excellence Is A Minority Sport

by Similoluwa Ifedayo

The ordinary man is not your mentor, but you need him. 

There is comfort in the ordinary. It feels safe, familiar, and agreed upon. It is the voice that says, this is how things have always been, this is how things should be and means it kindly. But there are moments when that voice begins to sound like a ceiling rather than a guide. 

I encountered this tension through a debate in jurisprudence, but it did not remain in the law for long. It followed me into conversations, into observations of society, and eventually into how I understand ambition itself.

One man in this debate was Lord Devlin. He was a British judge and legal philosopher. Devlin believed that a society survives because its people share moral values. To him, morality was the invisible glue holding communities together—and so, morality was important. If too many people began to live in ways that deeply offended the shared sense of right and wrong, society itself would start to crack. In fact, he divided morality into two categories: “public” and “private”. Because of this, he believed the law was justified in stepping in to protect public morality.

But Devlin had a question to answer: whose morality? How do you know the moral standards of a society?

His answer was simple. Look at the ordinary person. The everyday citizen.

The person on the street. For context, in Nigeria, that person is easy to picture—the passenger squeezed into a Mass Transit Bus, the voices on a Molue arguing loudly about politics, religion, economy, and how the world ought to be. If most of these people felt something was wrong, Devlin believed the law should take that feeling seriously.

Then there was Professor Hart, an influential legal philosopher. I first encountered him in his debate with Professor Fuller. He believed that law should be separated from morality. Hart was less trusting. He did not deny that society had morals, but he worried about how easily moral outrage could slide into fear, prejudice, and emotional reaction. He questioned whether the average person—however sincere—was always equipped to decide what should be punished or permitted. For Hart, law was supposed to be an exercise in reason, not a reflection of popular anger or discomfort.

Hart’s deeper fear was this: the ordinary person is rarely in a hurry to change. If society waits for everyone to feel comfortable before it moves forward, it may never move at all.

That fear feels especially real in developing societies. In parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, belief systems shaped by superstition still influence how people explain misfortune and crime. Accusations of witchcraft, reliance on spiritual explanations, and even the lynching of suspected criminals are sometimes defended as communal justice. These beliefs are not limited to the uneducated or the poor. They often cut across class, education, and influence.

Now imagine building a future on that foundation. Imagine deciding what should be allowed, encouraged, or punished purely on what feels right to the majority at a given moment. It becomes clear why Hart hesitated. Progress cannot be handed entirely to the instincts of the present.

But this reflection does not end with law. It spills into life and that’s why I’m writing.

There is danger in relying too heavily on the standards of the ordinary man. That danger shows up when dreams are dismissed as unrealistic, when ambition is described as arrogance, when difference is mistaken for delusion. 

The crazy part? The ordinary voice does not usually say these things with cruelty. Often, it speaks out of caution. Out of fear. Out of a desire to remain safe. Out of the limitations of their mind to see what you see.

Yet safety has never been the birthplace of change. So, you can’t allow their opinions matter too much.

Still, ignoring that voice entirely is also a mistake. Just as law cannot exist in isolation from society, vision cannot exist in isolation from people. Resistance is part of the terrain.

Misunderstanding is not an accident; it is a feature of growth. Those who think differently must learn not only to move ahead, but to carry others along—not to prove superiority, but because progress without people is fragile.

How do we define the extraordinary? What makes anyone believe they are intelligent, excellent, or special?

In my current read, “Keep Going”, Austin Kleon offers a disarming answer. He suggests that the extraordinary is not magic or mystery, but the ordinary, given extra attention. 

Perhaps this is the truth behind excellence: it stands out because most people do not stand there. It stands out not because it despises the ordinary, but because most people do not remain there long enough to look closer. It is visible because the ordinary remains where it is. This does not make the ordinary worthless; it makes contrast possible.

The lesson, then, is not to despise the ordinary man, nor to surrender to him. It is to understand his presence, anticipate his doubts, and still choose to think beyond him. Law teaches this lesson subtly. Life teaches it brutally. And growth demands that we learn it early.

If you build your dreams entirely on popular approval, they will never grow taller than the crowd. But if you forget the crowd exists, you may never reach anyone at all.

What this demands is twofold: a clear-eyed understanding of the limitations that define ordinary thinking, and the humility to accept that your own vision does not fit neatly within those limits.

Remember, you are not here to judge the ordinary man or constantly prove your brilliance. You are here to live a life that reveals, without argument, that there is another side of the coin. Let him clutch his comfort; let him shake his head at what he does not understand.

The world will call it madness, and perhaps it is—but progress is scarcely polite, and vision never waits for permission. Build anyway. Stand taller than the crowd. Step past their disbelief, their fear, their ordinary thinking, and let your life be proof that the future belongs to those willing to think beyond it.