Doing Our Best...

I get along best in this life when I realize that all of us, every single one of us, is doing the best they can on any given day.  Sure there are people out there who are probably not.  But I can’t concern myself with them and their perceived lack of effort.  

I do best in this life when I realize that best is a very subjective term and there are lot of things that go into someone’s best efforts.  And I do not know the backstory.  I do not know the person’s resiliency point.  I do not know a lot.  I just have this sometimes ass clown in front of me, fucking shit up and pissing me off.  This is likely going to always be my first reaction to my perceived lack of effort in another.  Most of the time, not all of the time, I can get to a place where my second, sometimes third thought, is “maybe this perceived lack of effort on their part is the best they have to offer right now...”  It never fails to humble me immediately.

I have bad days.  Really, I have bad moments.  I can’t remember a single day that was all bad.  Not one.  I just remember the bad moments of some days.  Most of my days are good, boring even.  There has never been one day, drunk or sober, that I got up and said, “you know what, I am not even going to try today...”  Or “You know what?  I am just going to be a raging asshole all day long...”  Nope, not one single time.  And yet, there are days when I have behaved like a huge asshole and my efforts did not appear like I cared at all.  Regardless of all the above, it was still the best I had to offer on any given day and moment.

Recently there has been a very hard situation involving someone I love deeply.  It has been hard to watch and hard to coach her through this whole ordeal.  And the end result was poor.  It was not how any of us thought it should go down, but here we are, feeling backed into a lose/lose situation.  And the poor result was absolutely the result of the various capacities of the persons involved.  There was no situation that was going to work for all the people.  To honor one, would piss off the others.  To honor the others, would have been to dishonor self. In short, it was a mess.  There was no easy solution that resulted in everyone being happy or feeling like they were treated fairly.

There was a lot of talk about best efforts and striving to do better and in the end, the best effort was a wholesale departure abruptly.  There was never going to be a meeting of the minds, there was no consensus to be had, so the best effort was to terminate the situation and move on.  No one is happy about that decision but it really was the best effort at the time.  I am sure that life will bring to bear other solutions that we didn’t think of at this time.  I am sure the passage of time will give us perspectives we did not have at the time. Life is like that...

In Buddhism, there is a Lojan slogan that says, “of all the witnesses, hold the principal one.”  Or in a more popular vernacular “To Thine Own Self Be True...”  Neither is easy.  It is fine to see what everyone else thinks or wants from you, expects from you.  But in the end, it has to be your decision to fail others or fail yourself.  In the end, it is always going to come down to taking care of you, or sacrificing yourself on the shores of others.  Mostly it is a mixed bag of this in life.  It is rarely all me or all them.  Often, quite often, there is a middle ground.  Sometimes, there is just not.  And you have to pick you, and let them talk the trash and believe the things they are going to tell themselves to make the situation feel better to them.

No matter what others may think, only you know if it was your best effort.   It is incumbent on each of us to inventory ourselves, our lives and our behavior to see what we are comfortable with, and then to ask the very hard question, “can I push myself a little farther?”  And we have to live with the consequences when sometimes, that answer is no.  A poor showing, a bad result, a failed attempt is our best effort despite all wishes to the contrary.  Despite a sincere desire for things to work out differently.

It is hard to do the right thing for you and for others.  And for me, it is especially hard to do the right thing for me when so many others clamor for something different from me, need something different from me, demand something different from me.  It is a lonely and hard decision to let everyone around me down, and do what I feel to be best and right and true for me.  It is hard and complicated.  And never leaves me with a very good feeling.  Despite years of work on this exact subject area, I still really want everyone to think well of me.  I still want to be held in high regard...and I want to be given the benefit of the doubt.  And despite all of this, sometimes I still am not able to capitulate.  I am not able to make a decision for me that matches with what you expect from me or want from me.  Sometimes I have to pick me, and you get to judge my actions as selfish, dishonorable, bad, wrong and all of those other things I have lived my entire life attempting to avoid ever being said about me.

But you cannot do better than you best.  And that is a flexible and ever changing thing in this life.   Monday I might have mad living and relating skills, but Tuesday, fuck Tuesday, I got nothing at all for anyone.  It is just life and living and I have to see that if I feel this way, act this way, then perhaps so do others.  And that brings me all the way back to...I do best in this life when I look at all situation and people as doing the best they can with what they have available to them at the time.  Even me. 

And shame is the natural consequence of not being able to live up to what I believe I should be able to do, or need to do. And sometimes, my best produces shame and guilt. And one of the hard consequences of living is attempting to match up my sincere desire to make you happy and, despite my best efforts, not being able to do that.

Again, still...