I Did My Best

One of the hardest things for me to say out loud or even in my own head is “I did my best.” Why? It makes me shudder quite literally and I will then find my brain has gone down a path of a long story about how of course I didn’t do my best and that it’s arrogant to think that I did my best and how dare I think that I did my best—am I better than other people? I feel like I have to physically step away from this conversation inside of myself and most of the time, I just try to say other, similar things because those words are so fraught. I can get away with something like, “I couldn’t see everything at the time” or “I worked hard enough” or “I don’t need to be perfect.”

I’ve spent some time recently trying to sit with this. A friend said to me once, when I was resisting the idea so hard that I had done my best, “Mette, you know what it’s like to do your best at a race. Have you ever in your life run a race where you didn’t know at the finish line that you had given absolutely everything when you got there?” And this was a very simple answer. I have never done a race where I didn’t know that on the finish line. Sometimes I second guess myself afterward and think about what I could have done leading up to the finish line that would have led to me being able to do better, but that is not the same thing at all. And also, I’ve done a few races with family members where the point of the race wasn’t to get me a good time, but rather for me to help someone else through the race. That is another kind of “doing my best” at a race that is more emotional/psychological than physical and I would say that in those cases, I am even more exhausted in other ways at the finish line than when I can focus solely on my own athletic effort.

If it’s true that I give one hundred percent of myself to every race I’ve ever run, then why can’t I say it about other parts of my life? Why not my marriage or mothering? Why not my career as a writer? Why not certain friendships that fell apart and that I mourn the loss of, years and sometimes decades later?

A part of it is probably my dad. I don’t remember him ever rejecting the phrase “I did my best,” but my whole life, he was constantly telling us that we had to be humble and insisting that humility had to be shown in particular ways. He really hated any hint of bragging when it came to school performance and would insist that if we knew the answers, we should help other kids (never mind that this was a terrible idea socially, or at least it was for an autistic kid like me). He had strong opinions about social justice and about no one being above another. For a long time, I thought this was an important part of Mormonism, but I’m not sure now that it ever was and I don’t think it is now at all. The “God has chosen us” messages of the church have taken over at this point.

I think that there were other people in my life who had a vested interest in making sure that I always felt like I hadn’t given enough or that I could never sit and rest and enjoy my life. Sometimes the same people were angry about my successes and telling me that I hadn’t tried hard enough was part of the formula for making me continue on a hamster wheel of achievement. I’m very good at achievement and this has been a year for me to step off that wheel and examine what it is that I am getting from being in the wheel and reminding myself that I am not doing that anymore. I’m not chasing checklists and report cards and pats on the head from authority figures. I’m looking for authenticity and sustainable efforts and, yes, happiness.

What I’ve decided now to do is to stop giving one hundred percent to everything in my life and to do it consciously and with pride. Because giving one hundred percent leaves me depleted and then I don’t see my life clearly and I don’t make good choices about the future. Giving one hundred percent isn’t required. And that it doesn’t mean that I’m selfish or lazy if I choose to do only a moderate amount for one project or another. Even as I write this, I feel resistance to the idea. It feels like arrogance (thanks Dad!).

Maybe giving fifty or sixty percent is a better strategy than the stupid question “did I do my best?” anyway. I am a human. It is more arrogant to imagine that I have special standards of “best” that no other human could possibly adhere to than it is for me to shrug and not give my best—if there is such a thing as a “best” at any given time for any given person. I suppose this is a gift of not believing in god or that angels are “constant notes taking of every action” every day. I don’t believe there is a judgment bar where I will be asked to account for every second of my time in this world. Phew! No one cares what I do. And overall, that is a very, very good thing.