Beyond Excellence

The recently-concluded European football championships saw Spain scramble to a lauded victory over perennial title-chasers Germany. I watched that final match and saw little to applaud except that the 'nearly men' of European soccer had finally won something. Spain have too often flattered and frilled; even those who conceded that they were an excellent side in this year's proceedings worried about that at the end.

But really, the match was a terrible one. If anything, Holland's ruthless dispatching of championship pretenders Italy and France made for better theatre. In fact, the whole tournament was an expectedly patchy affair with brilliance far outweighed by mediocrity and uncertainty. Which is a lot like life. And so, this thought came to mind...

Maybe, excellence is not what we find at the end, at the peak, zenith or pinnacle. Maybe everyone exhausts themselves by producing excellence, and by the time we 'make it' or 'succeed' or whatever, it's only because we were once excellent and held an edge long enough to see off the opposition. Often, the opposition are better, but we are luckier or more stubborn or more favoured by powers beyond us, and we win. But we attribute this to our own excellence, since it would be painful to admit otherwise.

After all, success is only the outcome of process. A success is that which is logically expected as the decedent of process, and if the outcome is not to be logically expected from the process, it's only a fluke, a flash, a folly elevated to the realms of miracle.

So, when we say that the best is yet to be, we yearn for a just process that yields success. But we will take anything, of course. Even if what we get isn't excellence, but a miracle we never had any right to expect.