A challenge I face in pursuing excellence

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.