"Do Your Best"
When I was just a young man of nineteen years, my mother brushed her hand through my hair on a warm spring day. "Do your best," she said to me softly. That summer she was gone. Forever.
Over the years, I have thought back on that spot of time, and I have often wondered whether or not I have done what my mother asked. Have I done my best? Or have I just done what I could?
I never measure my life by the things that I have failed to accomplish. Looking back, I think that I have always stretched every experience to the breaking point, sometimes just to see whether, when faced by certain calamity, I would break down or break through.
To be honest, I failed once or twice, lost control, guessed at the wrong meaning of things and crumbled under the weight of so much otherness that it silenced my voice.
But I never broke my word, never took back a promise, and never broke a heart before my heart was broken first.
"Do your best," my mother said to me softly.
I did, I think, but sometimes, I wonder if even our best is enough.
When I was just a young man of nineteen years, my mother brushed her hand through my hair on a warm spring day. "Do your best," she said to me softly. That summer she was gone. Forever.
Over the years, I have thought back on that spot of time, and I have often wondered whether or not I have done what my mother asked. Have I done my best? Or have I just done what I could?
I never measure my life by the things that I have failed to accomplish. Looking back, I think that I have always stretched every experience to the breaking point, sometimes just to see whether, when faced by certain calamity, I would break down or break through.
To be honest, I failed once or twice, lost control, guessed at the wrong meaning of things and crumbled under the weight of so much otherness that it silenced my voice.
But I never broke my word, never took back a promise, and never broke a heart before my heart was broken first.
"Do your best," my mother said to me softly.
I did, I think, but sometimes, I wonder if even our best is enough.
