What they don’t tell you when you start creating is that an F isn’t Failing.
An A is.
The 95% of almost done doesn’t bring an idea to life.
But in every other aspect of life, 95% is pretty good…right?
Isn’t good enough…good enough?
If you stop just before the finish line, the work you did to get there doesn’t count. Your time is marked as incomplete and instead of a place, you get a Did Not Finish next to your name.
95% complete, it not the same as done.
Ideas only get you so far.
The execution of an idea is a double-edged sword.
You’ve got two ways to execute. One happens more than another.
First, you can take it out back and kill it.
The death of an idea falls quieter than a tree.
But that isn’t always as quick and painless as it sounds.
Sometimes the idea lingers, and you push for it…only to let it sit at “close enough” and never release it into the wild.
It’s a much slower death, but it is still a death.
95% doesn’t cut it.
That’s still a failing grade.
Or better yet, non-existence is worse than failing.
The second meaning of executing an idea is to get it done.
To see it through to completion.
To purge it from your mind by setting it free of your own volition.
I don’t know if they still do this, but growing up they used to throw around the slogan of ‘most likely to succeed.’ It’s an interesting take on measuring children, because life has a brutal way of hitting people square in the face.
The idea of it being, I think, is most likely to make a big splash…and amount to something that makes the community and the school proud.
One person per class?
That’s a pretty low expectation, isn’t it?
So then, who’s left?
Everyone else gets, ‘most likely to secede’?
To quit before they amount to anything?
What is it we are aiming for?
We can all pick up where we left off and see a project through.
We can finish our current race.
It may not be pretty, but it sets a standard to finish.
It gives us a Personal Record to base our next endeavor from, and we can grow from there.
Perfection isn’t in the cards.
Letting go works both ways.
The moniker of “you’re not a has been, you’re a never was” stings so much because we, all of us, have so much potential for potential.