I cringed when I first heard about Melania Trump's initiative To Be Best, for it not only reeks of the non sequitur pablum that characterizes 45's Administration but it recalls back to my childhood where the entreaty was "to do your best."
I doubly cringe with the memory.I loved my parents. I had a good childhood.
My parents devoted their lives to us, their children. They were involved with our academics where my Mother would go over my Spanish assignments and quiz me on my English vocabulary words, the sports we participated in like track where my Father was the Booster Club treasurer, Cub and Boy Scouts with my Father taking my Patrol hiking and camping as well as assisting me to complete my merit badges, they scrimped and saved so we were able to go to the college of our choice, they even offered to pay for graduate school for any of the three of us, they took us on family vacations and got encyclopedias.
We each had chores to do while growing up. Me cleaning the kitchen floor nightly and all the bathrooms weekly. I hung out the wash. During the Fall we all went out with our dog to rake the leaves and during the winter snow, we all went out with our shovels to clear out the driveway and sidewalk..
My parents did not count the number of "A's" we got, nor the trophies or awards, or not even whether we went out for sports or engage in extracurricular activities. They were lassie faire about what we did and how we did it. All they cared about was for us to "do our best." Of course we had the strong familial and cultural examples of focused, heads down, hard work that reinforced us not slacking off. Our parents demonstrated that by how they lived their lives.
My Mother took in work in order to be a stay-at-home parent. She typed legal documents with her Royal manual typewriter using correction tape and carbon paper. She was one of the first telemarketers who sold magazine subscriptions for the Saturday Evening Post under the pseudonym of Mrs. Miller for who could pronounce or remember the name Hashizume? My Father got his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering while working full time with a family at home. He worked his way through Rutgers by being a waiter, among other things for a fraternity which he was not a member of.
I found that the bar was always set just out of my reach, not because of my parents but because of me. I could always do better. I could spend that extra couple of hours studying. I could be more clever or smarter. I could think harder. I could try harder. It was a constantly losing proposition for me hence the Sisyphus reference. I felt that I kept pushing that boulder up that hill only to fall back on me.
Eventually I gave up. I got too many "C's" and fell short in the other things I tried to accomplish. I learned to not even start something for I could not be good at it right away. Even though I knew it would take patience and practice to get to that point of competency, I stopped having the desire or drive to put forth the effort. Monty Python has captured what I am trying to do: This is my quest.
This approach severely limited me in activities and interests that I may have enjoyed or been fulfilled by. I was somewhat conscious about that and worked on approaching life with a more relaxed attitude. However I found that I could not overcome the imprint that was put on my child psyche. I have this attitude that I cannot shake, try as I may. I don't have the heart to put forth much effort in any of my endeavors. I go through the motions, whether it is recreational or things that deal with making a living. Of course this is a recipe for failure.
I've been told that I excel in certain things; like deep listening, presence and compassion. I have intelligence and humor. Those are qualities, not activities. I'm better at being rather than doing with these qualities. I have been stumped in how I can apply what I am good at, that I enjoy to something that creates something, that is financially valued, that can be applied to an activity. In the meantime, I am still pushing up the mountain but nowadays they are rocks rather than boulders and the mountain is more like a hill.
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