Good Enough

After traveling hundreds of miles in a cattle drawn wagon for two years through the plains of the midwest and over mountains higher than you have ever seen in your life, you would come to find yourself tired and weak. I have been to the Oregon Trail museum and read the journal entries of the people who made that long journey and I have read about the overwhelming relief they found when they finally reached the pacific coast. But several didn't make it. Some did not starve or become ill. Some just gave up. "Well, here is as good as any other place I suppose." I can just hear it as they began to unpack the wagon, setting their supplies and personal belongings down on the dusty desert floor not realizing they were only few hilltops to the land promised them. Here is good enough.

I suppose there was a man (had to have been a guy) that decided one day, "I am tired of spending so much money on toilet paper. I know, I will make it half as thick!" Why would you need more than that? And we have had to put up with the curse of single ply ever since. But it should be good enough.

One day someone walks into a store, sees a spatula on a rack, and they say to themselves, "I bet I can make a cheaper version of that." And the dollar store was born. A one dollar spatula is as good as a five dollar one right? It will work good enough.

What happened to striving for excellence? What happened to wanting to be the best or build the best or give the best? What happened to setting standards and goals and working hard to accomplish them? Today, money is tight but I still refuse to settle for good enough.