I’m Doing The Best I Can

Note: I wrote this about a year ago.

People say “I’m doing the best I can” all the time. But are they really? Am I? I doubt it. We don’t live in a world where people “do the best they can”. We live in a world where we try to “get by” and if that means short changing something we do it. If you can get away with one coat of paint you’ll skip the second important coat. That is, for the most part, the world we live in. I’m not saying that everyone is always short changing everyone else and I’m not saying that even if that were the case that it’s always a negative thing.

I am however, saying that this idea that “we’re doing the best we can” is simply a crock of shit. I look back at my 36 years on this planet and can say that I have not done the best I can. Am I frustrated with that in myself therefore I am “taking everyone down with me” by pointing this out? No, I just know that as honest as I am and as hard working as I am, I know I do not always do my best. And neither do you.

It’s not in our DNA to do our best. We are all in survival mode and surviving does not always have anything to do with the best we can do, it has to do with doing just enough to get by one more day, one more week, or one more month. If you live pay check to pay check you aren’t doing the best you can, you’re merely surviving. If you talk about losing weight and getting healthy chances are you’re doing just enough to make it seem like you’re doing something but not as much as you could be doing.

If you are talking about wanting more free time to write but you watch TV 6 hours a day, you are not doing the best you can. If you say that you eat healthy I bet you could eat even healthier. If you workout I bet you could workout harder. If you love your spouse I bet you could love your spouse better. When you wash your car I bet you could get it a little bit cleaner.

Do you understand my point?

I guess I just bring it all up because that phrase, “I’m doing the best I can”, is very seldom true when spoken by you or me. We simply are not going above and beyond as much as we could. We are not going the extra mile or pushing ourselves to the next level. I get frustrated with myself when I say it and this morning when I was telling myself that I was doing the best I can…I laughed and then proceeded to get frustrated.

Do more…always.