Thoughts on Excellence
I have been holding on to a few thoughts about excellence and the pursuit thereof. I have come to realization that sometimes our pursuit of excellence is just an excuse for us to have everything done our way or to do everything ourselves because no one can live up to the expectation we have. Such is the vice of a perfectionist. In my preaching of striving for excellence I found myself taking on more and more to show excellence and trying to conform people to my perfectionist mold instead of providing opportunities for service so that they could actually strive for excellence.
Tony Morgan has some good thoughts on this subject this week. Check out Should I Pursue Unexcellent?
“‘Great works’ (of art) and ‘good works’ (of charity) had better also be good work. Let choirs sing well or not all. Otherwise we merely confirm the majority in their conviction that the world of Business, which does with such efficiency so much that never really needed doing, is the real, the adult, and the practical world; and that all this ‘culture’ and all this ‘religion’ (horrid words both) are essentially marginal, amateurish, and rather effeminate activities.”C.S. Lewis, “Good Work and Good Works” from (The World’s Last Night, and other essays).
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