Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Excellence
I'm pondering excellence. Athletes, governmental leaders, CEO's whatever. There is a cost to excellence. Obviously time, often $, but what about the rest? How does one determine how much time a spouse or child should receive if pushing toward excellence? Can family be healthily maintained and even grow while a parent is pushing to their maximum? Is excellence sustainable? Excellence in character, excellence in work, excellence in parenting..... Does one negate the other?
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Perhaps excellence might be viewed in the same light as perfection. It being both an unattainable goal and a viable, idealistic process. I believe that putting end points on certain processes is deceiving. Grow up? What, am I done now? Why don't I just seek to grow, in fits and spurts (I'm sure) until I am worm food? I'm excellent! No, I'm not, but at this juncture, I am excelling and hope to not dip down too far between my next few excellent moments. Life is alive and organic and we are merely humans. And hopefully ones that wish to be our best. Trial and error, failure and success, balance and chaos ... these are things that will be with us whether we like it or not.
Accept these things and love. Love yourself and others and the unknown next moment. If you are worried about shortchanging parenting while pursuing excellence in another aspect of your life, seek balance. Do you wish to show your children than Mommy is an individual too, and has needs and wants of her own? And that as they grow, patience will be their ally, and Mommy will return from her personal moments to be everything they hope she will be? I believe that this approach builds security for children, as opposed to the "constant safety net" approach. No, I don't mean neglect and endangerment are good for your child. Thankfully, it seems most folks here aren't of that sort of reactionary frame of mind.
I realize that what I'm describing is an insane combination of awareness, vitality, superhuman deliberateness (word?), and unending energy. Yeah, and we all have that. Yeah, not so much. But that is where success and failure come into balance. Sometimes, you're just not gonna cut the mustard. Some will wear those moments better than others. If it were not this way, the human stew would just not be as tasty.
Then again, what the hell do I know? I don't have any kids.
P.S.
On Blogspot, it says you can easily change your templated background later. Good Luck.
wow, you're deep! Where are all the fluff blogs? heehee. Where have you been???
I think there has to be a balance in all things. You can strive towards excellence, knowing that you will never be perfect. You can be the best that you can be, working very hard to achieve specific goals. Sometimes that means that we have to sacrifice time away from loved ones in doing so. But, there has to be a balance in order to be healthy or you will get to your goals and look around and realize that you've lost perspective of what was really impt. all along. I don't think one necessarily negates the other as long as you are careful to keep the needs of family first. There is a give and take thing that takes place. Sometimes family has to give and be understanding while we are achieving some goals, but then we have to come back and make up for that lost time and attention with them. It's tricky and different for every family.
Life is more satisfying if you are seeking to do something rather than seeking to be something. There is nothing more disheartening than a lack of clearly defined goals and objectives.
Wow. Being versus doing. Now there's a kettle of fish! Seems that balance might be valued twixt those two, as each has merit.
What is more peaceful than a moment without goals or objectives?
Is it because in doing there is the clear "Check, it's completed" ? I love that aspect, but UR, I notice I do get frustrated when I don't see that in my personal growth. I'm sure it's immature, but I want to be able in my own soul to say YES! I'm moving forward. Maybe I just love growth. I think that's it - I love it in people and actually want to encourage it forward - and desire it for myself.
To answer the question:
"How does one determine how much time a spouse or child should receive if pushing toward excellence?"
You and only you can determine that! We all require different amounts of time and attention to feel loved and for our needs to be met. Look your family in the eye and see if they are wanting more of you. Are their needs met? Do they REALLY come first? Are their needs taking back-seat to your goals? Now, realistically a family is give and take. Sometimes hubby and older kids do have to take a brief back-seat for mamas to get things done, but they can't stay there for long. Balance.
"What is more peaceful than a moment without goals or objectives?"
- Which, of course, is not a state of being, at least in the context that we are talking about. Enjoying peaceful moments is, in fact, doing something. And when would these moments be anyways? Awareness, or lack thereof, of one's goals or objectives does not necessarily mean that a person does not have goals or objectives. He may just be focused on relaxing in that moment and has the luxury of ignoring the pressing needs of his goals and objectives.
Ignorance can be bliss in those moments. I was kicking back, kiddos napping, 73 degrees, sunny AND breezy out in the backyard and realized, " I must soak in the perfection," Bliss...
There is some niggling fear that no matter what I do, if I choose to do it wholeheartedly, I'll lose my kids or Levi because I misprioritize somehow.
I'm curious, children or no, have you ever come up against something you wanted and you knew you had to "throw your heart over the line". If so, what's your story and how has it turned out?
Yes yes yes...when I married John, I just knew that I knew that I had to marry him, I knew that I would never get a more humble, gentle, tender, loving man. When I finally took the leap..and it took awhile...it was the best decision I have ever made..I am happy and I know that God has blessed our marriage.
Excellence is a tricky word since it implies a standard. Who's setting that standard? Most of us raised today have a sense of what the world out there sets as excellence - it always seems just beyond our reach, no? Perhaps excellence should be what is our individual best. May not look like someone else's personal best, but it may save us from ending up a train wreck. Another question - why are we striving for excellence? To prove our value, to make God look good or just out of a desire to give Him the best we have? Are we willing to invest as much (time, $, whatever) in receiving from Him -- so that we WILL be balanced -- as we are in giving? This issue has many directions one could go in ...
Excellence!!!!!!
I would think that as beings created by some other being the standard of excellence would come from him. So I think that the desire to seek excellence is healthy and God given, but I agree what is excellence and who defines it. If it is God then striving to be the most excellent person I am to be is possible without having to "neglect" another aspect of your life. Seeking God to give priority to things in my life will allow me to grow into the most excellent me ( which wil,l as someone else said, look different than the most excellent Beth). We must look at excellence holisticly and not as excellence in one area, we must seek excellence in all the hats we wear. Which someone once gave me some great advice on how to do this and that is "Be where your at" if you are with you kids do that to the best you can, if your hanging with the hubby do it to the best you can. I guess live in the moment, and prioritize your time the way you feel God leading you. This has meant for me times that I wasn't always extrememly happy about seeking excellence in my life because it meant laying something down that "I wanted" but knew it was not the time for it. Well enough thoughts from me...
P.S.
I am not an excellent speller but I don't feel that it is a priority right now !!! hahahahaha!!
Excellence means loving first things first. To me, personal fulfillment comes most often when I do that. If I give God time, husband and children and self feel happier. If I give husband time, children are happy and I am happy that he is happy. If I give children time, husband is happy that they are happy and I am too. If I love others, they are happy and make me feel happy too.
This is SO Good! So much wisdom is so few words!
I heard the other day a point from a serious multitasker. We were discussing excellence from the balance perspective. "How do you keep all the areas balanced?" I asked. She said something interesting. "I gave up having things "in balance" and instead looked to make sure life was "in harmony". "If I tried to make sure that chores, kids, pets, hubby, school activities etc all had 100% equal attention - it couldn't work. I could never achieve excellence as a human being because it is impossible. BUT if I looked to make sure that my spiritual, familial and work life were in harmony - working together with the priority areas of the day receiving the focus, then the guilt was removed and the flow restored."
Each area could grow in excellence at a seperate rate. God is where we find our standard or internal sense of excellence, but I believe we are given the gift of response or of choice. My hiccup was a faulty understanding that all things must receive 100% focus at one time. Never was a math girl... ;)
I guess we tend to think of balance in terms of a scale. To me, the results of harmony, as described above, have all the earmarks of balance. Semantics can get in our way. But, really, we just need the tools that work for us, the words or meanings that make sense to our minds/souls, and it is good that we try to share our means to success. I was once told that I would need to speak in a voice that my subject could hear if I wanted to be understood. This may mean different voices/words for different people. It mostly matters that we arrive at a mutually understood place, regardless of minutely different paths taken to reach that place.
Similar but different. I suppose I think of balance literally. The crazy clown mom balancing plates on 10 poles.
Harmony seems to be letting areas have priorotized focus without feeling guilty.
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