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| title | layout |
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| A challenge I face in pursuing excellence | post |
A challenge I face in pursuing excellence is... [drum roll]... finding others who pursue excellence.
Okay, maybe that wasn't such a surprising revelation. As the saying goes, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man another".
For me, it is not satisfactory enough to look to my contemporaries - I have looked centuries back, hoping to appreciate greatness.
Without further ado, I share a list - off the top of my head - of works I look up to:
In Classical Music,
- Beethoven's Cello Sonata, Op. 102
- Schubert's Winterreise
In opera,
- Bartók's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle"
In Russian literature,
- Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin"
In children's literature,
- Tolkien's "The Hobbit"
Others:
- a fairly modern film, Wong Kar-Wai's "In the mood for love"
- A song by The Beatles, "Come together"
In concluding, I note that if I have a small, puny mind, the world I see is a small, puny world. I wish for a mind that can see greatness in even the smallest thing - eyes that can see beauty and wonder.
For example, can I learn, from a dog, how to be happy, while being held on a leash? Or, from a cat, how to meditate?
I close with a quote from the classic tale, "The little prince":
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
This post first appeared on LinkedIn.