_{Finally some use for this shit.}

Today at work I encountered a news (the article in Finnish only unfortunately), about a Finnish woman who's running a marathon in every single day for a year after ending up unemployed. While I usually don't watch or read news at all, I found this through a translation site that I use daily. I use addblock at home, but at work they might caught my eye, because downloading anything or making changes to the computers isn't allowed.

What I found quite remarkable was – not only this Finnish woman's project itself – but the comments which were along the lines of: "This woman is crazy!" "That is unhealthy." "How can she have time for that?" "She's mentally ill." "Addiction!"

While it might hold true that the long term health concerns are real with doing something as extreme as she does (in the article she herself told about her repetitive strain injuries), I was amazed to find how almost every comment was putting her down. I mean, this woman is running a marathon every day – or at least taking the equivalent amounts of steps – and they don't even give slight credit to what incredible effort it takes to do what she does, when most of the people have not ran even a single marathon. Instead they tell her what she should be doing, everything what's wrong with her behavior and this and that and blablabla...

I remember how @tarazkp has talked about the "mediocrity culture" here in Finland. I hadn't yet recognized it myself, despite living here all my life, but I definitely understand now what he means by that. Whenever someone does something extraordinary, people just put him/her down, when someone steps to a path of unconventional life, they look you awry, when someone decides to make a living as an artist they tell you to "get a job".

Yet at the same time we look up to the idolized already famous characters – hockey players are national heroes, and Kimi Räikkönen's (The F1 driver) biography is probably the new best seller here.

You know what I think why this is?

Cognitive Dissonance

You see, when someone ordinary does, or even tries, something extraordinary, we experience dissonance: "He/she is doing something incredibly hard, but I'm not even trying." And to alleviate this inner we distance ourselves from the character; "She's crazy, mental", something that we are not. By creating this sense of separation between the character, we can (try) alleviate the discomfort within ourselves with our "rational" explanation for our own (lazy) behavior.

But those already famous? They are easier to accept because we don't really think of them as "normal". But when an ex-smoker and a mom of 3 in his 40s runs a marathon (or the equivalent at the least) every day – that hits home.

People just can't live with the fact that some people can do incredibly hard stuff while they're watching reality TV and not even living life themselves.

Or maybe they're just assholes – producers of shit.