Doing Our Best

It has been said half measures avail us nothing. In the second act of my life I was a home builder. Along the way I employed many people. There were, unfortunately, many occasions when I assigned a task to someone that, too be kind, they half assed. When I would ask them about the quality of their work and if they were paying for it, would they, the usual response would be "I tried". "So, because you 'tried' and the product is unacceptable, how should we proceed?" This was routinely met with a blank stare followed by a severance check. Now these tasks were within the the skill set they said they possessed when hired, or I wouldn't have assigned them. Had they been honest, I would have either taught them or found a task they could do well, even if it was just cleaning up. It never ceased to amaze me though, when I would walk a job that had been "cleaned up" at the end of the day only to find full trash cans and debris swept into corners. Seeing the look on my face, the typical response was "I will do it in the morning" which wasn't the direction given.

Doing our best, at all times, is a better way to live and pays spiritual dividends. To be clear, some days are going to be better than others and no one does this perfectly. If we are going through a difficult patch sometimes the best we can do is just keep our thoughts to ourselves and avoid causing further damage. But if the voice in the back of our mind chimes in with a "it's good enough" when we know we can do better or any justification for a sub-par effort, we must stop, take a breath and go back give it our best. Whether it is at work or cleaning our bathroom, doing our best avoids the shoulda, coulda, wouldas, and we never again have look at someone and say "I tried" to justify a halfhearted effort we know we could have done better or put off what we are tasked to do today, and then subject ourselves to needless mental wear and tear worrying about it.

So regardless of where we are along the path of our spiritual development, we strive to do our best every day, for faith without works is dead, and what is at stake here is of much greater importance than a poorly painted room, overflowing trash cans, or procrastination but the principle is the same.

© Vincent Lee Jones Living In Spirit All Rights Reserved

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