Blog Your Blessings: Be Excellent

After a busy school year, a busy summer school, and a busy few weeks vacationing with my family on Topsail Island, it was good to have a week to myself. They were quiet days during which I sat back and watched the world. 

One of the most delightful things I watched was the entering into the ocean of a newly hatched loggerhead turtle. He made his journey across the sand to the water with the help of some turtle hospital volunteers and 50 onlookers who cheered him on his way. Night had come early; the sky was black with storm clouds before 7:30. In the dull light, the water swirled round the little guy, rendering him invisible and then taking him on his way in very little time. 

Just watching that little guy do what he was destined to do--to step into whatever life had to offer under cover of darkness and despite the rough weather coming (or maybe with the help of it) and just go, all alone in a vast world--humbled me. 

You do what you do because you're you. You go.

Looking into the sky a little later that night, I saw the light of military helicopters whose pilots and crew were doing what they do because they are who they are. They were practicing for what lay ahead in Pakistan and other parts East. Looking into the sky day and night any day of that week, I saw these fighters at work. Alone or in groups of two or three, they flew in and out of view, close to the water, up and down the beach. It seemed no matter where I turned, they were there. Their presence wouldn't let me forget there is a world beyond the strip of beach called Topsail Island, that not everything in this world is calm and easy.

That you do what you do because you're you. You go.

Watching all this, I wondered if character is a choice or a matter of destiny or maybe a bit of both.

Watching the natural world at work with the love and admiration of ordinary people and watching the military world at work through the sheer force of will of the individuals who make it, I got to thinking those things that don't display these kinds of excellence just aren't important. 

Make it count, or let it go, but stay with what is important. Be yourself; be excellent.

That last week was a good one. It returned me to my own little world feeling sure and calm. If the turtle can do it, if the dudes in the sky can do it, then I who live somewhere between their worlds can do it. I will be myself.