Excellence in Everything Always

Parenting can uncover your ethics - even the ones you are unaware that you have.

My son was working on a diorama for school. To begin with, he didn’t want to begin the week before. There was no reason to be done early. I realized that I always start early. I like to have time to enjoy my projects. I like them to marinate. In cooking, the ingredients need time to marry. In art and everything, I need multiple nights for my muse to simmer on the project. Information comes to me in the middle of the night. This takes time.

The night before the due date arrived, he began his project. He spent at least an hour, describing all the ways that it didn’t really matter how good it was. He was not going to be graded on the beauty or craftsmanship of the project. He was only going to be graded on what he read and how well he understood it. Well, he is an obsessive reader, of course, that part wasn’t going to be an issue.

Then why did I hate hearing him prepare for a project by describing how he was going to half-ass it? I called him downstairs to speak to me.

I said that I understood it wouldn’t change the grade, but that he was making a choice about how he would operate in the world. My approach is ‘Excellence in Everything, Always.’ I don’t always achieve it, and I fail plenty, but I always set out for excellence.

I was surprised to hear these words leave my mouth. They were always there under the surface, but without an example of the opposite, I might have never heard them clearly with my own ears. I sounded so hardcore!

Parenthood is a journey of self-discovery. By relating so closely to people who don’t yet know anything, you learn what you feel you know.