The Invitation By Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, And if you dare to dream of meeting Your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool For love, for your dream, For the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, If you have been opened by life's betrayals, Or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, Mine or your own, Without moving To hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, Mine or your own, If you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes Without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithless and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty Even when it is not pretty every day, And if you can source your own life From its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, Yours and mine, And still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!" It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, Weary and bruised to the bone, And do what needs to be done for the children. It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand In the center of the fire with me And not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you From the inside When all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone With yourself, And if you truly like the company you keep In the empty moments.
Where would we be without Excellence?
What would this world be like without things running near perfection all the time. Would we be able to live in a place where everything you are aiming for falls short of perfection. Would we be more content and forgiving? Or we would never aim for the stars, and would never witness Grace from anything that would be man made? Isn’t the world already like that in some way? The news would never, ever give a five stars review. Perhaps we would erase from human language any superlatives. Or even worse you would have more often a reminiscence of those religious teachers from another time from religious schools claiming that the highest mark is reserved to God, then for Mother Superior, then themselves…
Is it not already a bit like that? You may say. After all, excellence depends on the lens and where you put the benchmark.
Excellence is commonly understood as executing a task, a performance, a skill, a creation with the highest amount of possible quality where only one of two minor components or aspects could be considered missing or of slightly inferior quality. Excellent is better than Good and less attractive than Perfection. To excel is to reach a higher vintage point than anything else around you. If you are excellent at a skill, you are considered to be head and shoulders above others performing the same skill. When we encounter Excellence in a product, or a performance, there seems to always invite us to stop and take it All-in; and at least express some respect if not admiration and appreciation towards it. “Good” arguably, does not offer the same quality, unless the standard benchmark is really low and good quality happens to be rare. During that tiny moment where we stop to acknowledge how much work, effort, energy, skill, precision, timing, etc. has gone into produce such performance or object, we are to some extend in a state of awe and wonder. We consider at least for a tiny moment, the journey of creation, design, research, rehearsal, development stages and how it eventually found its way to us.
Tiny elements of Mystery, Grace and mini time portals are being opened where we try to fathom what it would take for us to be part of that. We may wonder how much of that “Magick” could be already in us, and how far from it are we in whatever we enjoy doing routinely.
It softens our beings, make us feel bigger, cultivates a sense of wonder and can even remind us of what we stand for.
If we focus on the most commonly understood notion of excellence where a modern human being or a society wishes to transcend itself and get a certain amount of recognition for having worked hard at getting better everyday at something. They often wish to be hopefully remembered by their community and loved ones and at best go down in history books.
In our modern complex world things do not have to be perfect always. Of course but perhaps simple things like preparing food or going to the restaurant should be safe, tasty, enjoyable, fulfilling, effortless and leave us with a desire to repeat the experience. Perhaps even explore and gain insights? It would not have to leave us ecstatic for this experience to be excellent. But far beyond fair and good. When things are qualified to be excellent there is an echo lingering in our bodies and souls that draws us to share the experience with others. It softens our beings, make us feel bigger, cultivates a sense of wonder and can even remind us of what we stand for.
The vast majority of the population is excellent or event perfect at tying their shoe-laces. Are we opening a magic portal then? If we ask a mystic, they may argue that we probably should, as they excel at finding the divine in the most mundane occurrence. But you have likely come across everyday things that seem to still puzzle academics such as how is it that a push bike can turn? Or how sewing machines work? In that sense, we could say excellence is banal, abundant and even the norm. When you think for example how excellent our bodies work, if we consider how much they are doing for us fighting viruses, bacteria, cancer, strength and conditioning, or general stress everyday since we’ve been born… since the dawn of life on this planet…
As an adult we can claim we are excellent at brushing our teeth, getting dressed, being polite, or doing what we love through the countless repetitions; to the point we no longer think about doing those things with a spirit of excellence. It’s almost automatic. In a sense, we are all excellent at many things already. If we take a bird’s view, out societies despite our many many flaws are still delivering food to our supermarkets on time and give the impression of abundance. It can be said that the reason a plan crash is featured in the news is a token that it’s quite rare event, considering the amount of planes that take off and land with near perfection around our beloved blue marble. It was not always so, but if we stop for a second on how far we have come from building cars, planes, and space rockets, it should be quite astonishing how the scientific revolution has brought us to the point where excellence is now almost taken for granted.
And yet, we wish to accomplish more, higher goals in everything we do. From our health, the skills we aim at improving, to our job positions we aim at reaching. The self-help industry is full of ways on how we can get either get better at doing things or feeling better about life. Since the information seems to be out there already, there is in theory nothing to stop us from reaching Excellence. TED talks and success stories from influencers lead us to believe that we are only ten thousand hours away from national or world recognition at what we love to do and happen to be good at. By means of high levels of enthusiasm and positive emotions, through downloadable apps and careful custom scientific planning, that future seems within our grasp within a few years. Or so they say. “Sky is the limit” and “Only if you believe you can.” This is what heroes do! Right? Once our basic needs are met, excellence, higher purpose and transcendence are next!
In the spirit of the Excelsior, Plato, Nietzsche, January and new resolutions, there is a noble intention for humans to reconnect to their higher and idealized version of themselves in this time of the year. It’s important to have something to look forward to. To reconnect with meaning through action. It’s as if every time we are showing up for practice, we are also summoning briefly our teleologic self, closer at every move. Including the clumsy ones. The more we fail and the more we reflect on how distant that is from perfection or the sense of grace, the closer we get to it.
You guessed it from the under title. It would seem that that there is a thing or two we are forgetting when we engage in becoming Excellent. The first is that, through simple repetition and dopamine reward we are all totally capable of engaging with an excellent piece of utter turd. Just to give you some examples on how a certain kind of excellence does not seem to bring us any closer to any sense of destination, or fulfillment. Do we really need an AI powered toothbrush? The Meta verse is the fruit of many excellent people building an excellent platform for people to “live in”. A streaming service that seems to only have sleep for competitor.
We can argue that many things around us are excellent at some things and very detrimental to others. Or that something is excellent for short time use instead of perpetual, as “one never know” for sure what the future will bring. When are we being engaging in pragmatism and when are we engaging in self-deceit?
Therefore, we should have clear in our minds which systems of values and directions are we using to point the arrow to? Excellence is an arrow that never meets its target but constantly aims at being superior to something or someone else. We all likely wish to excel and transcend ourselves. This process helps us to increase our sovereignty and tends to provide a wider range of choices available to us in what we wish to pursue and seems to be a feature of life itself. Without resilience, species would not be excellent and vanish. Life seems to have a very broad sense of what success means. And DNA has large amount of odd things that are useless for here and now for this species but that could be activated in the future because it has proven to be useful in the past of a particular gene pool. But with humans and their cultural ambitions, the criteria for success can be surprisingly arbitrary. The directions of what we are told we should be going are the product of stories that we take with us. Are all the stories, including the oldest ones and the loudest ones the best ones for us? Nothing wrong for us to try them on, and see if they really fit or at least take what works and drop the parts that are useless.
My second critique of excellence is that through the relentless narrative of “No pain, No gain” combined with “When there is a Will there is a Way”, the hustle and unbalanced YANG culture had never had it so good! Social media platforms promote influencers that are competing for our attention with high-definition shorts, special effects and filters. Music trying to impress us with high levels of compression in our ear drums. Good looking people posing and expressing intense emotions that urge us to follow them. But how can I compare myself to something so unreal and distorted? Even when I was playing guitar for hours on end, for weeks, months; I was likely excellent for medieval times but not enough for today. I remember that even though I was disciplined, something in my psychology was always telling me that it was worthless because I was comparing myself with masters and demigods like Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Slash and Hammett. One could say, the warrior in me internalized negativity and guilt. That it’s not the master’s fault, nor society, but my own. That I had a character prone to self-sabotage. Or perhaps that it is precisely that voice that you need to follow to reach excellence.
But if we rely on those brain chemicals only to be excellent or reach our long term goals at the detriment of our bodies and relationship to others, then collapse is imminent.
Personally, I resent the harshness of that warrior, despite how useful and powerful it was. I am still a warrior in many domains, but I think with age, it had mellowed quite a bit. As one encounters enough dead ends, false routes. As we face indifference. As the body burns out and says NO, we eventually come to realize that perhaps, this is not for us. How can you be so certain, you may ask? Because the struggle seems to no longer be joyous. When at the end of a series of rehearsals, there is no sense of joy and we feel physically drained. When there is no moment where we are visited by the muse. When there is no sense that the moves we do are no longer ours, as if we were carried with a divine energy, and instead seem stuck, and that every moment is an effort, then I would say it’s time to STOP. Whether it’s the wisdom of the body, the DNA, our lineage or whether you believe in a guardian angel, those simple signs of burn out are signs that we either need to change direction or maintain the objective through another path, another method, and/or with other people. That’s our intuition at play. Dopamine, Adrenaline, and stress are chemicals that our warrior uses to spark action for short-mid term. So we are all capable of hustling head down against the wind, rain, snow and general adversity … for a time. But if we rely on those brain chemicals only to be excellent or reach our long term goals at the detriment of our bodies and relationship to others, then collapse is imminent. Especially if we are alone in our quest. We will still be potentially transcending something, but at the cost of being unauthentic or indulging in martyrdom and re-enacting trauma, because we might not know any better. I fear that the stories we hear over ultra charged media obsessed by short term gratification, are abusing the nobility of Excellence by means of countless amounts of bovine excrement. They take a tiny element of noble truths: The desire for transcendence, freedom, longevity, community recognition, the integration of our golden shadow. But the means to reach those are biased in their favor where we have to use this product, this lotion, this outfit or vehicle instead of these other ones that are also competing for our attention. And it is likely that if we happen to be coming from a modest background, and excel in an intellectual discipline, there is a chance that an elite that speaks, dresses and uses their spare time differently will grow judgmental of us. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu mentions through his theory of Habitus that our social background will forge a certain way of performing tasks that are emblematic of our social status and may collide with the codes of the ones that we meet on the way up to Excellence. In other words, if I happen to be called Billy Elliot, I may be mocked when I show up for rehearsal for ballet as my style may look too vulgar for upper class dancers but will also back home with my school mates mock my sense of aesthetics. The relief promised by Excellence and the satisfaction of having made it in life will likely never manifest this way. Resentment and bitterness are more likely, leading us away from the way of compassion.
Instead of “No Pain, No gain” consider “Explore your edge”…
What is therefor excellence without the sense that no matter the obstacles and struggle, the whole journey is supposed to leave us with a sense of expansion somewhere deep inside of us? If the discipline and the praxis damages us (body, soul), isolates us, and leaves us empty, then I curse upon this virtue and whomever brings it forward.
One might say, that engaging in something outside our comfort zone has still the merit of teaching us something that can be useful in the future, one does not need to become a master before being called a quitter or loser. The sooner we realize the goal or the means or the method we use, or the people we do this with are not fulfilling for long periods of times, there is no point in enduring any more pain. The film Whiplash, for example did not really land its message for me, although I could enjoy how ridiculous the teacher/bully was. If it was up to me, I would ditch that hustler expression of “No Pain, No Gain” and consider instead: “Explore your edge”.
Exploration has a certain humility to it that signals that the way is difficult and that it’s okay to retreat for as long as we judge necessary and reassess. In the very large scheme of things, life is all about exploration without guaranties of result, and if any, they will not necessarily pay any dividend during your lifetime and maybe not in the ways we imagine. The exploration has no clear sense of direction, so it’s up to us to go in any direction we like. And going inwards can be as rewarding as up, down, left, right or even revisit things backwards, or upside down, at low tempo or whatever else. Where would humans be/do without exploration? Something mysterious (or horrific?) is always calling us.
But let’s make this another opportunity to exercise sovereignty.
While engaging in excellence, the crucial aspect is that we ponder on the relevance of the destination and the method before and many times during the praxis. Is it fun? How does it feel? Do others also benefit from me engaging in that discipline directly or indirectly? As Lincoln said: “I do not care for a man’s religion, whose dog and cat are not better for it.” Because there will be a very high probability that the better we become at a skill, the more the Ego will hijack it to make us feel superior and be a source of suffering. Later to take shelter in the fact that supposedly being a master in something like art, or spirituality justifies the means to an end, and allows you to be a back orifice to others in your supposedly glorious ascent to the mountain. (Another Whiplash, or Black Swan anyone?)
In the spirit of New Year’s resolution, I wish to scream out loud:
F*#CK EXCELLENCE!!!
and burn it down due to the way western culture is mainly embodying it now. Only to allow it to emerge again with a spirit of joy, innocence and exploration. Free of judgments but not free of critics that wish us well on our journey. And that if by Easter ( or end of this month for some or X number of years for others...) you have not reached your goals, my plea is that we all inquire what we have learnt, how much fun are you having. That we reflect on how much wonder does this bring to our lives and if our circles get to see us smile more and see us healing. How much attunement and harmony can we invoke to be fully with ourselves, our bodies, our environments, our tools or our fellow people. While also see us more grounded, and at the same time bigger that before. Not out of superiority, but out of tranquil embodiment of grace due to our regular encounter with humility, enlightened confusion and alignment with our future selves. Not being afraid of making mistakes as only the recovery matters. The fact we are engaging in becoming a better human being is reminiscent of us catching a glance of the mystery in the most mundane activity. Who knows where this expertise will lead us, but one can only hope it’s not going to be the common destination we were told when we first witnessed it performed flawlessly.
Excellence is dead! Long Live Excellence!
