Yikes! So many emotions get stirred. “Better is not good enough.”
Says who? … Isn’t that a little harsh? … Buddy, if you’re going to wear a t-shirt like that you should lose 20 pounds! … But my website….
10 p.m. at the Grocery Store
Last Sunday night, I found myself grocery shopping at close to 10:00 p.m. This is Sunday, folks. It is almost bedtime on a school night – what the heck are all these people doing in the store? The line-up at the one till with a human is 8 people long and the self-serve check-outs are all in use. I wander, I am sure I need one or two more things; maybe the line will be shorter in a few minutes.
As I wander, the man with the purple t-shirt walks toward me. Well, really, he walks toward the apples, but I am there, and I am reading his t-shirt: “BETTER IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH”. I feel it in my stomach.
Is this a message from God (in any of his-her-its possible manifestations)?
Is this a message to me about my website? Perhaps we need to be “Imagining Best”? If we imagine the best, we are more likely to get there … but does this play into the myth of perfection?
To me, “better” is a statement of continuing and continuous growth. Best implies competition. I like to do my best. I even like to be best. Winning is excellent – as long as we all feel like we’ve won in terms of a good time or learning something. A concern I have with “best” is the possibility that we try to “best” someone, that we allow for others to lose so that we might win. However, coming the day after I lost my Adsense contract made me think I should think about this and not think I know about best and better.
No longer having ads on my site that earn pennies per click is a challenge to pick up the pace and monetize the website in ways that work for all of us. I put in many hours every week to bring content that is thought-provoking and, hopefully, helps people (including me) to imagine better. It is reasonable that there is a return on my time and expertise. I’m open to the different ways that one might see a return: increased friendships, professional relationships, lively exchanges in the comments, requests for more personalized expertise, and money. Definitely, I have seen some return – high quality returns – but I am imagining better. The ratio of return to effort requires decimal points with zeroes after them to quantify. Would that change if I were imagining best?
Better has baggage
It occurs to me that “better” has baggage. The t-shirt speaks to a childhood message of not being good enough, and that when I felt I had improved the result was, often, still not good enough. Maybe the t-shirt was tapping into this baggage. Maybe the way this website has been communicating allows for some of that baggage to come through? No matter how hard you try, and how well you do, the elusive goal of “better” is still ahead.
Fair enough. For those who aren’t ridiculously committed to continuous personal growth this website could set up a feeling of being burdened with “shoulds”. The implied “should” is real. But is only my opinion. You will do what you do; I will do what I do; we will all do our best and in the doing find that we are getting better.
Personal Growth = Evolution of the Species
I think personal growth is part of our purpose – from a point of view of evolution of the species, as well as our personal spiritual progress.
For our children, especially, but also for all those with whom we interact, the biggest gift we give them is the knowledge that personal change is possible. Results will vary. 
Things that feel like mistakes let us know we are trying something new or going outside our comfort zone in something we’ve done a hundred times before. Better trumps best. We live in the best world we know how to create right now, but the one we create tomorrow will be even better.
