Is the pursuit of excellence destroying our quality of life? I was left asking myself this question by three very different sources in recent weeks.
One was psychologist Dr Fergus Heffernan, talking on the radio about how, in the pursuit of excellence, we can damage the prospects of those we do not define as excellent. Heffernan, a visiting lecturer at leading universities in Ireland and the US, and an internationally recognised expert on stress management, was referring in particular to the points system.
By building everything around points and by making the Leaving Certificate a defining stage in a person’s life, he suggested, we fail to value and nurture the abilities of many people whose performance might never fit in with a narrow definition of excellence.
His words got me thinking about the presumption that the pursuit of excellence is a good thing. None of us can be excellent in all areas of life, so where does that leave us?
On the same day that I was listening to Heffernan I was rereading Pema Chodron's book When Things Fall Apart. She is a Buddhist writer and she talks about how we are enmeshed in "the world of hope and fear" in which we are dogged by the hope "that there is a better me who one day will emerge".
This she sees as a source of suffering. We doom ourselves to a sense of failure because “we can’t just jump over ourselves as if we were not there”. That sentence stayed with me because I think it expresses what so many of us are trying to do without even considering whether it is a realistic ambition. It isn’t, of course, and it comes with an inbuilt sense of dissatisfaction and failure.
Then the Gaelic Players Association issued a report that said 50 per cent of third-level intercounty players feel overwhelmed by their commitments. These are people who, I think it is fair to say, pursue excellence.
But they complain of, among other things, a lack of time with family and friends and difficulties with time management and stress. The GPA suggested various changes to the GAA calendar to lower the level of stress on players. That, no doubt, is very necessary but I fear that these players are suffering in many ways from the stresses and strains that are general throughout society, though I accept that their commitment to the GAA adds a layer of demands that most of us never face.
Difficulties with time management, for example, are pretty common and, I suspect, growing all the time. In fact I found it telling that in his piece for The Irish Times, Ian O'Riordan, after giving the title of the report "Never enough time" added in brackets "Indeed who has?" And there it is: nobody has time, we are all chasing our tails and we all fall short in the race to meet commitments.
Do less, not more
What’s to be done? On a practical level I think we need to question the whole idea that we are able to take on more and more tasks and duties and obligations, and still have lives of satisfactory quality.
In other words, we need to aim to do less and not more. But whether such an approach ever becomes possible will depend in large part on our own beliefs.
We can use all the techniques we like to get things done or to reduce the load, but in many ways it is the expectation from ourselves and others that we perform excellently in all areas that does the harm.
Maybe the first step is the philosophical one of accepting totally, absolutely and completely who and what we are, complete with our weaknesses and with what we see as our failures.
Perhaps we need to be able to accept that excellence is usually beyond our reach. And that’s all right because we’re human, after all. If enough of us have the courage to adopt this philosophy, then gradually, in unseen ways at first, something fundamental will shift.
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness on the Go. His mindfulness newsletter is free by email.
pomorain@yahoo.com