Month: August 2021

The bridge scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind . . . “What is your quest?”

I have no answer to that question. Or too many answers. Or both.

Is that troubling or liberating?

Yes.

Source: CPJ text message today.

It’s a thought-provoking thought.

One response is to become a wimpy “everything is relative” lazy baby. Nothing is better than anything else in the long run. In the long run we are all dead. That’s cynical and nihilistic. It’s not for me.

Some things are objectively better than others—otherwise, why bother?

I have within me a gear that drives me to “better” and I know “better” when I achieve it. (And it’s never enough). I think some (but not many) people have a similar gear.

Most people want to be told “this is better than that” and they believe it and take action accordingly. They believe the last thing they heard from whoever pops up in front of their face. They don’t think.

I’m like that in a lot of areas of my life, so I’m not being hypercritical. I don’t know or care about “better” in many, maybe most facets of existence. The important thing is to know this and FFS don’t just gulp down the last thing I hear and treat it as Gospel.

That’s probably a better view than lumping all humans into two categories, isn’t it? We likely all have a bit of us that yearns for “better” and a bit of us that is a gullible fish that bites on every lure dangled in front of us.

In the areas where you know what “better” looks like, double down. Drive relentlessly toward “better”.

But also have humility. Even here, where you have talent and discernment, other people know more than you. They have different ideas of what “better” means. They see things not visible to you.

I don’t know, but I would bet that even someone as monumentally advanced as Miles Davis would listen to other musicians and pick up pieces of “better” from them. People with a relentless itch for “better” seem to be relentless learners, seekers.