Can the perfect be the enemy of the good?

First thing first, happy New Year, how fortunate are we to see the new decade? It’s that time, where we get out our pens, manila papers; make our vision boards and write down our goals and targets. Some are confident and optimistic and others ridicule people making resolutions with phrases such as, “It will end in tears.”

It’s also a time of reflection and taking stock of the year that has past. Celebrating the wins and assessing the losses to figure out areas of improvement. So how do we ensure that we make a fair assessment? Ensuring we don’t blow our own trumpet or downplay our achievements.

A great place to start would be not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, where we unfairly discredit our milestones because they didn’t fall in place perfectly as we had planned them inside our head.

We can avoid this trap of falling into a loop of self-doubt, despair and discontent by giving our best. So that when you have a honest reflection you can say, “My intention were noble, my character was unquestionable and I did what I could do with the resources I had.

When Jesus was asked how we can inherit eternal life, he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

Jesus was telling us the path to righteousness was giving our all, our best to God. I think this is an important tenet to borrow even in our worldly endeavours. Go hard or go home some would say.

It’s not easy when things don’t go to plan but knowing you sweat blood for it might offer a soft landing and even open up other opportunities you hadn’t imagined. You know, going up that hill to sacrifice your Isaac, but ending up getting a ram for your troubles.

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But this should not be an opportunity to make excuses and allow mediocrity to creep in. By any means don’t be good, be great. That’s the point right? Giving your BEST.

You might be asking, what if my best isn’t good enough? You are thinking back to that new job where you are always lagging behind, that entry test you keep failing or that standard you seem not to meet every time you try.

One topic we usually skip when speaking about the saints is they suffered. Some cried out to the Lord asking why they had to go through this suffering yet they had been faithful to God. There is nothing new under the sun and with that said we also have suffered, might be suffering right now and will suffer at some point in the future.

So yes we give our best but sometimes end up with egg on our faces and tears in our eyes. Sometimes we have to punch above our weight, challenge ourselves, and get out of our comfort zones to learn our lesson; that’s how we improve our judgement and reasoning.

In the case of Paul, his challenges, which were numerous helped him to trust God more and have inspired generations of Christians through the God inspired books he wrote. And as he was reflecting on his life he said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. The GOOD fight!

Would you rather be Paul who gave his best to his God and his work and was pleased with it? Or would you rather be like Solomon who sampled anything and everything not giving his all on what mattered? This is what Solomon had to say in his reflection, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”