On Excellence

Professor:  Greetings my friend, what’s on your mind today?

Student:  I’ve been thinking about excellence.  I’ve been wondering why some people strive after it while it’s not a priority for others.  Why is it that some achieve excellence and others who try don’t?  And, how we know when it’s been achieved – is it an absolute that everyone recognizes, or is it subjective and in the eye of the beholder?  Can we all achieve excellence in some form or another?

P:  Perhaps we should start by agreeing on what excellence means because I believe our perceptions of excellence are tempered by the context within which we’re observing.  Tell me what excellence means to you.

S:  At one level, we may strive to do our best - whether raking leaves, driving the car, performing our day jobs, pursuing a hobby, running a race, or tossing a Frisbee.  Those are examples of performing a task to the best of one’s ability – trying your best under the existing conditions.  I’d put excellence at the other extreme – a masterpiece, the absolute against which all others will be compared, and something than cannot be achieved by someone with average ability.

P:  That’s consistent with the origin of the root, “excel,” meaning to rise high and to be elevated above others.  So we’ll agree that “excellence” means a demonstrated ability that is above or better than the rest.  And, while one might do an “excellent” job at raking the leaves, there are many people who could perform that task with equal aplomb which somewhat diminishes its “excellence,” would you agree?

S:  That makes sense to me.  While a task may be completed to perfection, it doesn’t necessarily rise to the level of “excellence” unless it’s something that few can achieve.  Which suggests that excellence cannot be achieved by everyone because then “excellent” would just be average.  If “excellence” is recognized as being above or better than the rest, is it obvious when we hear, see, taste, or feel it?

P:   To one who is uninitiated in the relevant subject matter, its excellence may be inscrutable.  Someone who has never listened to classical music may hear Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67, and not understand it at all.  I’d suggest that even Beethoven aficionados who have listened to it 100 times may not recognize the metaphorical conflict between the positive and negative that his masterpiece portrays with major and minor keys or the craftsmanship that went into defining complementary motives and themes.

S:  But, even someone who hasn’t heard it before will recognize that it’s exceptional right?

P:  No, I think not.  Without a cultural reference point, I believe that the excellence of a Beethoven symphony, a Steinway Concert Grand Model D, a Mercedes AMG Roadster, or a piece of hand blown art glass by the master craftsman Dale Chihuly will be lost on the observer.  It’s not until we’re able to compare the “excellent” to others that we’re able to fully appreciate its excellence.

S:  Something extraordinary.  Something above average.

P:  Correct, to stand at the pinnacle of excellence implies an ability to do something uniquely well don’t you think?  It may be that in your neighborhood, you perform the finest yard care but in reality, no special skills are required, just the time and inclination.  While it looks very nice, it doesn’t rise to the significance of “excellence.”

S:  I guess there are societal and cultural definitions of excellence as well as personal definitions then.  My raking of the yard is my own personal demonstration of excellence for me, my family, and neighbors to appreciate while Beethoven’s is one for the world to appreciate, whether everyone likes it or not.

P:  Personal excellence isn’t relevant to this discussion unless it’s also excellent to a wider audience.  We’d all like to think that what we do is excellent.  I remember writing a paper as a freshman in college called The Need for an Attitudinal Change that I thought was most excellent.  My closest friends and I were certain that it was a transformative message that could change the world.  Re-reading it 33 years later (yes, I kept it because I thought it was so excellent), I realized that despite the A-grade it received, it wasn’t so “excellent.”

S:  Fine, I get it.  My yard work is just that – yard work.  I’m not winning any prizes in Lawn and Garden.   

P:  Good.  We’ve proposed that “excellence” is demonstrated by the ability to do something better than others, but others need to bear witness (and not just your loving mom who says everything you do is excellent!)  If you run the mile in 3:40, you’d break the world record, but it’s only an “excellent” achievement if someone else is a witnesses.  If Chihuly crafts a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece but it slips off the pedestal before being photographed, it may as well never have happened.

S:  But artists, poets, musicians, and other creative types produce excellent works of art for the pure joy of creation.  Why must they be judged by others to be deemed “excellent?”  Not everyone understands or appreciates Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass or the Tao Te Ching or Beethoven’s 5^th, but that doesn’t lessen the significance of those achievements.  Just think if excellence was defined by the degree to which something appealed to everyone.  Universal appeal is the acid rain that erodes the pinnacle of excellence into the still sea of mediocrity.

P:  But, if there’s no relative comparison, how will we know if something rises above that sea of mediocrity?  Almost anyone with a glob of glass, a steel pipe, and a furnace can make a hand blown object of glass, but it takes skill, vision, and creative genius to create a work of art.

S:  Agreed – “excellence” rises above the sea of mediocrity and although it may not be universally appreciated, aficionados of the craft can judge its merit and deem it to be summa cum laude – a masterpiece a “Mona Lisa.”  Why is it then that some strive after it and others don’t and why are some able to achieve excellence and others are not?

P:  The explanation for why some excel and others do not must be as numerous as there are people who have come before us multiplied by the number of different avenues for human enterprise and expression.  Perseverance, luck, practice, timing, genes, inspiration, training, genius, materials, technology, patience, and myriad other conditions might combine to produce excellent outcomes.  Mozart is said to have spewed forth flawless first-draft manuscripts while Beethoven toiled and second-guessed himself through numerous revisions. 

S:  Those are subjective examples.  Certain achievements are undeniably superior – like world record times in sporting competitions, the scaling of Mt. Everest, or the landing of a man on the moon.  These are all superlative feats that deserve the highest praise and to which people can aspire with clear vision like saying “I want to be the next President of the United States.”  Whereas, the desire to craft the most exotic and graceful sculpture in glass is a personal goal that may be entirely irrelevant to the majority of people.

P:  But that’s ok, right?  We’re not judging one’s desire to create the most fantastic picture of a chair ever – if that’s what turns you on, go for it - right?  What we’re getting at is the desire or inclination of certain people or nations to strive to do something better than anyone else – whatever it happens to be – to run faster, to climb higher, to craft better, to sing the most beautifully, to fly higher.  And we honor and praise such behavior because it demonstrates to the rest of us what can be achieved as individuals, as organizations, as societies, and as a human race.  We need to have these benchmarks as goals, as targets, as references, for those who come along next to push the envelope and attempt to do as well or better.

S:  That sounds like the Olympic spirit.

P:  President Obama summed it up this way during his October 2, 2009 address to the International Olympic Committee:

[We] reach for a dream - a dream that no matter who we are, where we come from; no matter what we look like or what hand life has dealt us; with hard work, and discipline and dedication, we can make it if we try. That’s not just the American dream. That is the Olympic Spirit. It’s the essence of the Olympic Spirit.'

S:  But it’s not just the Olympic Spirit, or the American Dream, isn’t it the human spirit?

P:  It seems that there is a natural tendency, at least in our culture, to improve on things – to make things better – to build on the achievements of the past and improve the human condition.  But not everyone is so ambitious.  And, every effort to improve on the past can’t be assumed to be “excellent.”

S:  Is it the human ego’s need to compete?  Is it pure ambition – a thirst for popularity?  Is it a desire for honor, flattery, or favor?  Or is it just a self-confident cocky attitude that pushes someone to stick his head up and shout, “here I am dammit, show me if you can do it any better!”

P:  The explorer George Mallory reportedly scaled Everest “because it’s there.”  According to President John F. Kennedy, we went to the moon because:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

That speech from September 12, 1962 says a lot about the desire of the American people to win, to conquer, and to lead with a “banner of freedom and peace.”

S:  And we established a benchmark to inspire us, and the rest of the world, to further greatness.  It seems to me that leadership is a hallmark of being “excellent.”  Referring back to our definition – the pinnacle of excellence is visible to everyone who floats on the sea of mediocrity, if they choose to look up.

P:  Mediocrity may be a bit harsh, but your point is taken.  Some may choose not to look up – perhaps they’re content with the way things are and have no desire to change.

S:  If everyone achieved a state of “excellence,” what then?

P:  I’d suggest that humanity will never reach a condition when everyone achieves “excellence” in all aspects of everything we do.  “To err is human,” after all.  Even the Greeks and Romans recognized that it was unnecessary for each of their gods to be excellent in all ways and therefore imbued each with specific abilities that defined them.  While Zeus was more powerful than all, even he was weak when it came to female charms.

While a race may learn to live sustainably on the planet for millennia, as the aboriginal people of Australia have (and I trust you would agree that such a feat qualifies as being excellent) depending on the cultural perspective, others may consider them to be backwards and hopelessly anachronistic.  However, they may share the Hopi Indian perspective that rather than demonstrating our excellence by having landed on the moon, we simply illustrated further how hopelessly out of balance with Earth western society had become.

S:  Some may not be interested in excellence, as we define it – that’s their choice.  We may not be interested in excellence as they define it – that’s our choice.  What we choose to pursue and how it is that we might succeed in doing something others perceive to be “excellent” can be attributed to any number of factors, not the least of which is perseverance.

P:  And, while not everyone will individually achieve excellence, collectively and cooperatively with visionary leadership and a strong moral compass, societies can achieve great things about which we can all be proud.  We must equally take responsibility as individuals and as a people for performing, condoning, or simply ignoring those unworthy actions that lay hidden beneath the tranquil sea of mediocrity.   Perhaps we can discuss such things another time.