In which I consider Herculean labor

I'm tired today. And I'm reading the first chapter of Walden with my sixth period class. So perhaps inevitably, I find myself drawn to this passage today:

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. (2)

To be clear: my intention here is not to complain--in fact, a student said something to me earlier today about life being difficult, and I told her that was absolutely not the case, at least for me: my life, by almost any standard, is fairly easy.

But there is a tendency these days to fill our days beyond capacity, especially where work is concerned. I wrote a few weeks ago about busyness (or business), and perhaps this practice of over-filling our plates has something to do with societal ennui, perhaps it has something to do with the cost of labor in an increasingly competitive market, perhaps it has something to do with being driven, as so many of us are.

I've been thinking a great deal lately about the difference between success and excellence--it's an issue that came up at a USATF event I went to back in Daytona back in November and then again at a coaching school I attended in Tampa in December. I've been thinking about this difference in relationship to running, but of course, it's relevant to thinking about (almost) anything, and perhaps it's relevant here.

Success, as I see it, is defined externally, against an external (and probably concretely measurable) standard, while excellence is defined internally, against an internal standard. Success, since it's measured against an external standard, is achievable, but unsatisfying in the long term. A runner might have a particular goal (running a particular time, for instance, or winning a particular race, or beating a particular competitor, for instance), and while the runner would certainly be pleased to achieve that goal, the only thing on the other side of that goal is another (presumably more difficult) goal. And once that new goal is envisioned, the achievement of the previous goal pales, at least slightly. The response to success, we might say, is pride followed by a tinge of dissatisfaction.

We could say as much for almost any profession: that a person might have a particular goal (a promotion, or a salary, or a contract, or an office with a window, etc.), but the result of achieving that goal is probably the same as what we see with the runner--initially, pride in the achievement, but then dissatisfaction with the achievement in the face of a new goal.

Excellence is another thing. Because it's internally defined, excellence is unachievable in a practical sense. And if a person chooses to aim for excellence rather than for success, that person's relationship to the task (and to others) changes--for the good, I think. Since excellence (unlike a specific goal of success) is ultimately unachievable, we see the task from a position of humility, rather than pride. And since excellence is unachievable, we can see others engaged in the same pursuit not as competitors who must be beaten or dominated, but as ones who are also engaged in this impossible but worthwhile pursuit. Thus, we must respect both the perfection of the goal and the effort of others who have chosen to pursue it.

I don't know that I have the time here to explore this reference fully, but what comes to mind immediately is this line from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

   --the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

In Hopkins's poem, what the speaker sees is not success, but excellence, and in the next lines, we see pride (among other things) buckle, and the speaker is overcome with the perfection of what he has witnessed.

All of this starts to sound like I'm moving quite a bit away from Thoreau's text, but I don't think I am. Just a few paragraphs later, he writes:

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. (3)

I'd venture to say that what I'm describing here in terms of success are too often what Henry calls the "factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life," and that when Henry writes of life's "finer fruits," we wouldn't be far away if we thought the things we might find if we pursued excellence.