When I worked regularly with college students, some many each and every one of them would at some point reach a point of stress about their future. It wasn’t always regarding the big looming specter of their upcoming graduation and what they would do for the rest of their life; for some it was about what field to pursue, or what person. These choice points came along periodically, and caused them to pause and question all that had come before, in the name of making the very best decision possible with the information they had available.
That last part describes a pretty rational process. Did I mention I worked with college students?
My point, and I do have one, is that the pressure my students felt to make The Right Decision was immense. Enormous. Gigantic. And I often felt as though no matter what I said, they were still going to stay up half the night talking and texting and Facebooking in desperate attempts to figure out the perfect solution to whatever problem they had convinced themselves was just about to ruin their life.
Until the day I said to one student, in the car, at the intersection, on the way back from Starbucks yet again: “The good is not the enemy of the best.”
I’m pretty sure I remember her making a kind of violent movement after I spoke that phrase out loud. She jerked towards the window in a gesture I thought might indicate her opening the car door to jump out en route, but she didn’t do that. Instead, she sat back in her seat, inclined her head, and said what I consider to be the money phrase: “I guess I never thought of it that way.”
And then we were off and running.
I knew our conversation was meaningful for her, but I didn’t actually realize what an impact that one phrase had had on her until a few years later when we were catching up over lunch. She was talking about that particular period of her life that she had been in during our trip(s) to Starbucks, and she told me that the phrase “The good is not the enemy of the best” had totally transformed her perspective. In her words, it had given her “room to imagine that there were possibly more options- and more definitions of success- than I had previously believed.”
Well, gosh, you’re welcome.
Obviously, the phrase “the good is not the enemy of the best” did not originate with me. I can’t even remember where I first heard it. But I do know that it had a similar effect upon me when I realized what it meant; that I didn’t have to mysteriously and flawlessly arrive at my perfect future, fully formed. That I could give myself room; that there was room, big swaths of green grass and wide open halls that echoed with possibilities. That these alternatives didn’t have to overwhelm me but rather released me from the burden of picking the one and only ideal option in the shell game of life after college.
The trick, you see, as I and my student(s) learned and continue to learn, is that sometimes, to be committed is enough. Of course it matters what I am committed to; we must commit ourselves to those things which are understood to be good and healthy and true and noble and pure and admirable. Many of us make commitments and fail to achieve perfection through them; very few, if any, achieve perfection without commitment.
Therefore, today and as many days as necessary going forward, I choose commitment. I will align myself to something or someone that, in my estimation, will lead me farther down the path I want to be on, and feel called to follow. And, if I take a wrong turn or meet with disappointment, I will remind myself that mistakes and correction are all part of the process. I will be grateful that I’m not paralyzing myself with my compulsion to do it perfectly, and I’ll feel the gratification that comes from knowing I’m doing it at all.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
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