The real enemy?

You know the phrase, "Good is the enemy of great"? I used to really like it. It validated my choices to work when everyone else played. It made sense in my black-and-white world where there was perfection or failure and no in-between.

But as my pursuit of the artistic and inspired — specifically my attempts at creative writing — began to lose steam, and my goals began to look like steep, stormy, unconquerable mountains, the above phrase joined a list of others that the voice in my head used to flog me.

I finally came to a complete stop under the weight of perfectionism. The twisted basis of which is that nothing is ever good enough, but you should totally keep striving anyway. I guess until you crack up.

Here's my point. Good may indeed be the enemy of great for people who may need to be challenged and encouraged to reach their potential and give their best. However, I've come to believe that for the perfectionist, perfection is the enemy of great. Heck, perfection is the enemy of good, because at some point, you stop doing anything you can't do perfectly, which is pretty much everything, as we are all simply human.

So, here's to trying to do something good, rather than doing nothing at all.