One thing I will never forget on the one occasion I met Donald Trump, when he was running for president in 2016 and trying to convince The New York Times to endorse him, was the way he started one sentence: “The beauty of me is …”

I can’t remember how the sentence ended, as I was so impressed by the audacity of the way it began. Australians would never speak that way, in earnest. On one level, I admire the chutzpah. He was large and bombastic, but shrewd. Maybe we should all be aware of the beauty of ourselves, trumpet it and trumpet the beauty of others, too.

This may be a struggle for the humble.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

But lately I’ve been pondering the opposite of this phrase – not the beauty of me, but the mediocrity of me. All the things I am generally pretty terrible at, but enjoy anyway. Or the things I was once bad at but have improved with time. When I spoke at a girls’ school speech night recently I found myself wanting to tell them to embrace being average, in a world of AI mimicry and filtered avatars.

The rise of the robotic mind is going to make it increasingly important that we embrace messy, chaotic, human creativity. And so many kids feel the pressure to arrive in the world polished, fully formed, even perfected.

So, as we puff and pant towards the end of 2025, hands on knees, sucking in air, it might be time to remind ourselves that the great Australian tradition of “having a crack” is a fine one........

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