The pursuit of excellence

Michael Phelps keeps me up at night.

Literally, I cannot get any sleep because the man breaks a world record every night at bedtime. As soon as his race is over I say to Monte, "Quick! Turn off the TV!" But it's too late; they've cut over to gymnastics and we're instantly sucked in.

I remember watching the Winter Olympics a few years back with my friends JoAnne and Rob. I was mesmerized by the figure skaters, the precision of their moves, the minuscule errors that shaved fractions of a point off their scores. "I wonder what it feels like to pursue excellence," I said to JoAnne. I honestly couldn't remember.

As a student I pursued excellence quite regularly. Not in every class, for sure, but on the odd project or paper. More particularly, I pursued excellence in my high school and college choirs, because my choir directors would not settle for anything less. We would work on a single phrase for ages, perfecting not just the notes and the rhythm, but the dynamics, the pronunciation, the emotion, the balance, the understanding, every single nuance until we could do it in our sleep. Or dead.

And sometimes I hated those long rehearsals, but oh! those moments when the music came together... I don't even have the words to describe how that felt. The best I can do is to say: It was like opening my mouth and exhaling light.

As I grew, I learned to appreciate the subtleties of creating a song. How sometimes, less is more. The way it feels when a note spins out of you and suspends itself on air. The delicate balance of a dozen voices leaning into one another, like a house of cards.

It was such a rigorous discipline, I surely would never have pursued it as an adult. But as a kid, I just liked to sing. And before I knew it, I was a Student of Music.

I was privileged to have wonderful teachers. They demanded excellence from me, and I was better as a result. It's an unsung benefit of the teenage years, I think - you're expected to pursue excellence as you grow. Once you're grown, not so much.

Excellence becomes a self-generated pursuit when you're older. And many of us forget how to do that amidst the daily grind and without the guidance of our formidable teachers. Adults are expected to get things done. It's the completion of the task that garners praise, not the skill with which the task is executed. I know that at my job the emphasis is often on getting it done now, rather than getting it done right. And how many of us never realize our full, fantastic potential? How often do we stretch to surpass our own expectations?

As I sat in JoAnne and Rob's living room, staring at the figure skaters on their TV, it occurred to me that no one had demanded excellence from me in a very long time. And I had forgotten how to pursue it for myself. The thought shook me, and left me a little sad. I wasn't doing much with my life at the time; I certainly wasn't doing anything excellently.

Flash forward to these Summer Olympics and I'm in a decidedly different place. (It's amazing, the difference it makes to have a goal in your sights. Everything seems a bit more...possible.) Some friends and I were watching Phelps power through the water in a preliminary race. "I could do that," I said as a joke. "I mean, it's just discipline. It's just hard work."

And somewhere inside that mouthful of crap is a nugget of truth.

Once upon a time, Michael Phelps was just a kid in water wings. It was discipline, hard work and the pursuit of excellence that turned him into the star he is today.

Watching the athletes this year, I feel the flutter of possibility. "Look what you can be if you really try," this little voice inside of me is saying.

And I am imagining.