Montaigne - why Ordinary is better

Being truly human means behaving in a way that is not merely ordinary, but ordinate, a word the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “ordered, regulated; orderly, regular, moderate.” It means living appropriately, or à propos, so that one estimates things at their right value and behaves in the way correctly suited to each occasion. This is why, as Montaigne puts it, living appropriately is “our great and glorious masterpiece”—grandiose language, but used to describe a quality that is anything but grandiose. Mediocrity, for Montaigne, does not mean the dullness that comes from not bothering to think things through, or from lacking the imagination to see beyond one’s own viewpoint. It means accepting that one is like everyone else, and that one carries the entire form of the human condition. This could not be further removed from Rousseau and his feeling that he is set apart from all humanity. For Montaigne: There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.
~ Sarah Bakewell on Montaigne