You’ll Never Get To Perfect

Rosanne Cash tells a story in her memoir, Composed about a performance she did with George Harrison. Dress rehearsal had gone wonderfully but the performance didn’t go quite as well. Seeing she was disappointed by that, Harrison walked over and consoled her. “It’s never as good as the rehearsal,” he said. As with music, so with life. Even when we do a premeditatio malorum, even when we get everything set just right, we’re still surprised by how things go. We eliminate all the big things that can go wrong, and then it turns out that a couple little things still didn’t go right. It’s just never perfect. That’s one lesson. The other lesson is that even as we study and rehearse this philosophy, as we plan out the people we want to be, we’re still always going to fall short. And so are other people. Marcus talked about how we can’t go around expecting the world to be Plato’s Republic. He also talked about picking ourselves up when we fall—because we will fall. Epictetus said that he never expected to meet a full sage—he just wanted to meet someone trying to get better. (Confucius, as it happens, said something very similar). So don’t expect to be perfect today. Don’t expect things to be as good as they were in your head or how you practiced them. Be content to be as good as you can be, while still trying to get a little bit better next time. Because that’s how progress is made and improvement is banked—and it’s the only thing we can count on for sure. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

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  You'll never get to perfect. Rosanne Cash tells a story in her memoir, Composed, about a performance she did with George Harrison. Dress rehearsal had gone wonderfully, but the performance didn't go quite as well. Seeing she was somewhat disappointed by that, Harrison walked over and consoled her. "It's never as good as the rehearsal," he said. "As with music, so with life. Even when we do a pre-Meditatio Melorum, even when we can get everything set just right, we're still surprised by how things go. We eliminate all the big things that can go wrong, and then it turns out that a couple little things still didn't go right. It's just never perfect." That's one lesson. The

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  other lesson is that even as we study and rehearse this philosophy, as we plan out the people we want to be, we're still always going to fall short, and so are other people. Marcus talked about how we can't go around expecting the world to be Plato's Republic. He also talked about picking ourselves up when we fall, because we will fall. Epictetus said that he never expected to meet a full sage. He just wanted to meet someone trying to be better. Confucius, as it happened, said something very similar. So don't expect to be perfect today. Don't expect things to be as good as they were in your head or how you practice them. Be content to be as good as you can be while still trying

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  to get a little better next time, because that's how progress is made and how improvement is banked, and it's the only thing we can count on, for sure. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps. And tell a friend.