Excellence at a thing . . . choreography, teaching, writing, as an entrepreneur or leader . . . does not confer "feeling excellent" any more than money confers happiness.
Yet we want to be excellent at our thing and want, presumably, to feel excellent too.
If we redefine the word or come up with some replacement (not “mastery,” not “expert”) would that take some of the oppressive corporate patriarchy out of what excellence too often implies? The way wanting to be excellent makes us unhappy rather than happy?
For in its current guise it is so easy to confuse excellence with “achievement” and “being known” or something equally thin.
Besides, maybe excellence is, like love, a private affair, something to be understood internally, even if it is also, like love, something to share and celebrate.
Or so, at the prompting of friends, I am thinking
And thinking too, again because of the love piece, that a better rendition of excellence would keep what is shared and celebrated local, circumscribed by the small circles of life.
Tomorrow: Dog Paddle Under The Bridge of Death