The Waste of Doing Only Average

We would preface these thoughts with a quotation from Carlyle: “men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.” This suggests of course, the willingness to use as fully as we can the gifts, the talents, the abilities, and the opportunities that the Lord God has given.

Some of us may waste time and opportunity by being fearful of doing too much. Some may impair capacity by holding back for fear of doing more than a fair share, by not wanting to do more than a fair share, by not wanting to exceed an average amount of effort or activity.

But we shouldn’t let comparison with the average of others hold us back from being or doing our best. Capacity is increased by practice and performance; and if we hold our performance to the pace of the less able, or the less willing, or even to the average, we retard our own improvement; we impair our own capacity; and we impoverish ourselves, comparatively and others also.

The Master’s parable of the talents still presents one of the most basic lessons of life⎯for all the servants in the parable did not receive the same. But event though there was not an equality of endowment, there was seemingly an equality of accountability in that they all were judged by what they did with what they had.

We cannot reach our full powers or capacity if we are held back by the average, by the problem of comparative performance. The average is only what it is because some do more and some do less, and it is not in any sense an absolute or an ideal. And insofar as it would lead us to seek a lesser level, the worship of the average is false and futile.

All men and all things will be raised as people are willing to improve performance. “Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.”