On Just Doing Your Best

Living in the space between excuse and ideal

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Many of us have heard the wise words, “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” (attributed to Ian MacLaren). Behind them is the idea that we are all just doing our best to survive. That what may on the surface appear to be a half-hearted effort, what may appear to be selfishness, or indifference, or laziness, or pride may in fact be depression, anxiety, rumination, a desperate fight to stay present and keep moving forward. We’re all just doing our best. And one person’s appearance of snobbish aloofness may just be depression or burnout in reality, in which case we should celebrate that they had the courage to show up at all. The tension between surface appearances and reality is the reason why MacLaren calls us to “be kind” to everyone. In David Foster Wallace’s great Kenyon College commencement address, “This is Water,” he makes a very similar argument. Wallace claims that the annoying person in the grocery store line and the person who cuts you off in traffic may be having a far worse day than we are, so we should choose to think about them differently and show them kindness and grace. I think Wallace is close to being right. We should show people grace, but not because they might deserve it due to their circumstances. We should show them love because God has first loved us (1 John 4:19). But while I agree that we should show love and grace and kindness to people because “everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” it seems to me that that still leaves the question on our end, on the individual’s end, of what it means to be “doing our best.” How can we honestly say that we’re doing our best, day to day, and at what point are we just making excuses for ourselves? Alternatively, how do we avoid perfectionism, setting a bar for “doing our best” that is so high that we always feel crushed and inadequate?