Pursuit of Excellence: A search for meaning

‘It was so very awesome you called. The whole day I was like, this is getting too much. Give me a break someone! And then you rung. O my God! I was like, I’ll go crazy.’

I heard the voice cooing with delight over the phone. For months people have been holed up indoors, working from home, though for many this is a bigger hole than their office. Tempers are justifiably frayed. An unexpected call from a friend in the evening, after hours of drudgery, with a couple of more to go, is a sufficient reason for delight.

Our Corona enforced proximity had emboldened me. The ‘awesomes’ and the ‘I was likes’ grated in my hearing, like a piece of eggshell in an omelette.

‘Don’t you think it is good to be clear in conversation? Won’t your friends appreciate if they hear concise words which have the beauty of clarity?’

My gratuitous advice rankled the young one. Now I received an unambiguous rejoinder.

‘Language is not important. Your thoughts are. These days people do not want to waste time on choosing great words. Definition of beauty changes with time. Anyway, it is of no use. Rather, we are put off by a fussy language.’

 

Language is not important? Beauty has no place in language? Is awesome such a versatile word? Can it be used to express joyful surprise on receiving a friend’s call, to describe an entertaining movie, a page-turner novel, an enjoyable meal, a lovely new hair-cut? And it can also describe the joy of viewing Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery or Raphael’s over-lifesize cartoons at Victoria & Albert’s, a visit to Louvre, sight of Snow-domed Kailash in the background of illimitable Mansarovar at fifteen thousand feet in the desolate Tibetan plateau, Nasiruddin Shah’s performance in Mirza Ghalib and Rajan & Sajan Mishra singing, ‘Aaye sur ke panchi aaye’. Should one not distinguish in speech, a simple joy from an experience that simply takes your breath away? Isn’t glee different from ecstasy? Doesn’t awesome suggest an element of wonder, an unbelievable magnificence? Doesn’t our language influence our thoughts too? Should we dull the vivid world of our sensations by colouring all experience in one hue? Is the effort spent in learning this discernment of no avail?

 

And then the final blow.

‘You see, this obsession with excellence is quite off-putting. It’s stuffy and high-brow.’

 

This set me thinking. Does pursuit of excellence require an apology? Does it serve no purpose in life? Is it an obsessive trait best left to atrophy in the ignominy of constant disuse?

 

 

 

Our lives, in the cosmic sense, are futile. Species originate and disappear like bubbles in the boundless ocean of time. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for hundred million years and vanished overnight in a freak cosmic accident when a giant asteroid, the Chicxulub, with a diameter between 11-81 Km, collided with earth, sixty-five million years ago. Mammals survived this catastrophe only because they were then represented by the tiny little, Shrew-like, nocturnal insectivores which dwelled underground. Disappearance of Dinosaurs was a god-sent opportunity–rather space-sent–for mammals. They now flowered with a prodigious exuberance. Homo Sapiens came along three hundred thousand years ago and now are the most successful species of mammals that ever lived on earth.

 

Asteroids abound in space. Though extremely rare, when another asteroid like Chicxulub will strike the earth again, cannot be predicted. But it is known that humans will not survive such a mammoth collision. Life could perish in several other ways: man-made catastrophes like climate change, nuclear holocaust, a genetically engineered disease; a cold death in a cyclical ice-age; a scorching annihilation as earth is engulfed by a disintegrating sun in the Red Giant stage. No hint will then remain of our existence. Our millennia old refinements of culture will disappear without a trace: Mahabharat and Geeta, philosophy of Plato, art of renaissance, sonnets of Shakespeare, tales of Chekhov, Parthenon, Colosseum, Taj mahal. And if some fossils, some ruins survive, these will await chance origin of intelligent life to discern their story (In this epoch, intelligence evolved 3.5 billion years after the birth of life on earth). We would just stop existing. Universe will not be an iota poorer. It will go on grinding, majestically and apathetically, as per its mute, insentient laws. But with none to understand its rhythm.

 

There is only one universal meaning in life: its meaninglessness. Suffering in life is eternal. For majority, joys are few and far apart. In past, till about a century and a half back, barring a miniscule of rich, for most people– and for millions of my countrymen even today– act of living was a relentless toil, spent in a never-ending struggle to find enough food to feed the body and shelter and clothes to protect it from harsh weather. There is no rational explanation for life’s pleasures and pains. In this uncertain life, a meaning, a purpose for living, although illusory, provides a much-needed succour to the soul.

 

Pursuit of excellence is one human endeavour which restores semblance of an order to the randomness in life. It affords us a purpose; an undying quest. Submerged in this, life seems to acquire the glow of a meaningful existence. Excellence is not an objective which can be achieved within a limited time. Its pursuit becomes a way of living, which enriches life perennially.

 

Bunraku is a puppetry art form in Japan, where three men work a large puppet. For a decade a Bunraku apprentice works only the legs of the puppet, in the next decade he learns to work left arm. His third decade is spent learning movements of right arm, head, eyes, and eyebrows. Only then is he a mature craftsman who is now visible to the audience, while his two apprentices, hidden, assist him.

 

Indian classical music is one of the finest intricate systems of music in world. For centuries its masters have followed a rigid system for imparting this knowledge to their few disciples. Almost all its great practitioners have learned their art in the Guru-Shishya tradition. Guru, the teacher, is punctilious in their choice of Shishya, the students. Process of learning is arduous and protracted. For few years, young acolytes, many below ten, learn nothing but daily chores of living. Guru imparts not only the secret of musical notes to his pupil, but a philosophy of life which encompasses but is not confined to music. After years of learning, echoes of this training are heard in the ethereal music of the artist. Their music is resplendent not only with the nuances of sound but with emotions and sentiments which enrich human life. Every such artist asserts that music is their eternal quest. None seems to sit back and enjoy the glory of the objective they have achieved after decades of strenuous training. They appear to exult in the pursuit of excellence, which is never-ending.

 

Search of excellence is a hard work. Rewards are inordinately delayed, if obtained ever. One must consider the quest an award in itself. Pleasure should be in the knowledge that one is striving after something beautiful and perhaps will create a little of it someday. Japanese language has a word Shokunin Katagi. It means artisanal spirit. This does not refer to the skill of an artist. It alludes to the process of creating something beautiful, which should also be deliberate, beautiful, and calm. Thus, Japanese endow the mundane acts of daily living with a sublime charm, a thoroughness which transforms the pedestrian acts of a work-a-day life into an art worth pursuing: be it making tea, gardening or the work of an artisan.

 

Excellence demands diligence. This is easily mistaken for a fastidious behaviour, if one ignores the process and focusses only on the objective. When I was young, we lived in small houses, rarely bigger than two rooms; My father’s job took us to a new town every few years. Our possessions were few. My parents kept the house spic and span. Everything had a place, every activity a time. These were followed scrupulously, not by the dictate of martinet parents, but voluntarily as a system of living. House never looked cluttered. My mother’s most valuable possession was a hand-operated Usha sewing machine. She used it often, cleaned it before every use and once done, pushed the heavy machine beneath a bed, its destined place. Even after decades I remember its shining, black and steel grey surface. She oiled it every month and tightened the loosened parts. The set of small screwdrivers, bottle of oil and the small dusting cloth were stored in a small recess in the body of the machine. I do not remember the machine ever needed to be seen by a mechanic. Father was fond of gardening. In the evenings, I would hang around him as he worked in his kitchen-garden. Plant-beds were laid meticulously in geometric shapes. Saplings were planted in straight rows and columns. He had even dug up a system of drains, so that water flowed to every bed when poured at the source.

 

Parents performed all the household chores with this thoroughness. Each task, however mundane, seemed thought out. This was their modus vivendi. I never heard them complain about these and though they never said so, I presume, the mere act of performing the tasks the way they thought these should be done, gave them joy and satisfaction. Life, it appeared, was following a pattern, not flowing haphazardly.

 

Excellence is often confused with perfection. These are two different realms. Perfection seems to be an end in itself. It implies stasis; once achieved, there can only be stagnation. Since it denotes an objective towards which one must strive, path leading to it is often perceived as hostile and laborious. Concept of perfection is itself ambiguous. It is difficult to define perfection in an activity. There are innumerable yardsticks to gauge perfection in any human endeavour. One man’s idea of perfection may be another’s idea of ordinary. Excellence is open-ended. It is not a destination to be reached, but the joys of following multiple paths that lead towards light. Excellence is dynamic. It denotes a mode of living. In its shade, life becomes a continuum of placid joys. It is no more an interminable saga comprising eternal chase of newer goals, interspersed with short ecstatic respites.

 

Equating excellence with perfection also prompts contempt for it. Idea of perfection seems to imply existence of imperfect. Latter is another source of distasteful inequality in an unequal world. Excellence in any activity demands steadfastness towards chosen path. Not all can command the stamina or motivation to pursue this course. Since excellence in artforms is most visible, any one lacking these is deemed a philistine. This excites a spiteful disdain for excellence. But excellence is not the sole preserve of art. It is practiced in every field of human activity: profession of medicine or law, in masonry and cooking, in writing books or composing office correspondence, in planning a grand public park and by the gardener who tends to it, in the oration of public speakers and the routine lectures of a university professor, in the cutting edge research in science and in the shop-worn application of this research in their routine jobs by various professionals.

 

Range of human activity is vast. A person, if so endowed, can excel in a very limited field of this repertoire. He is bound to be average in most and even abominably poor in some. Those who find striving for excellence a superfluous preoccupation of a vain mind often direct their disapproval at the ordinary in such individuals.

 

Excellence enriches and sustains our lives. I am in the profession of Medicine. When I was studying in the medical school, it was a common refrain of our seniors that ‘medicine is an art.’ I cannot deny that being equated with artists did not elevate our stature in own eyes. It seemed to put us at a higher pedestal amongst other hoi polloi professionals. After practicing medicine for more than a quarter of a century, I have learnt that it is an art only because it demands an unyielding lifelong passion to refine one’s knowledge and skills, to excel in its practice. This zeal of few keeps the practice of medicine in its track. It continuously informs those who do not cultivate this ardour, about the values, the possibilities, and the joys of their true and pure profession.

 

Excellence in any sphere has the indelible imprint of the individual who created it. This bespeaks the long arduous time spent in honing and refining these skills. Mediocrity is the product of masses. It identifies with none, it assimilates all. It requires no unusual effort. It is imbibed reflexively by our brain which has learnt the technique of imitation as a useful learning tool. But this all-inclusive nature deprives the commonplace of the singularity ingrained in excellence. Mediocrity thus, spawns a world of robotic individuals going about their life with a machine-like insipid uniformity.

 

But mediocrity has many virtues. One is the ease with which it can be acquired and practiced. It is believed that our bodies try to conserve energy in every task they perform. Mediocrity may then be the default state of all human activity. Mediocrity has its rewards too. In a world where everything is measured in terms of its cost and benefit ratio, excellence comes expensive.

 

 

 

Happiness is a universal human goal. Evanescence of pleasure this quest brings is also an inescapable truth in our lives. Pursuit of excellence provides a revitalizing breather from the mind-numbing monotony in life that is the lot of most. This endeavour may also beget something beautiful. Beauty is the only offspring of human mind which can lay claim to a modicum of longevity in our transient world. But none adopts the rigours of this path to create beauty for others. One takes this road because they cannot tread any other. Yet beauty is a source of joy for the whole mankind. Shouldn’t this be a sufficient justification– though arrived at in hindsight– for seeking excellence in every sphere of life?

 

Can one imagine a world without the Great Pyramids, Euclidean geometry, Aryabhata’s mathematics, Kalidas’s Meghdoot, Michelangelo’s David, Copernican astronomy, Galileo’s physics, Newton’s Principia Mathematica, David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Louis Pasteur’s Germ Theory of Diseases, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, Einstein’s General Relativity, Heisenberg’s Principal of Uncertainty, Ghalib’s ghazals, Faiz’s nazms, Songs of Lata Mangeshkar, Kishori Amonkar’s Bhoop, TN Krishnan’s Raghuvamsa Sudha, Maharajapuram Santhanam’s Mohanam, Cinema of Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy, Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Genes, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and all the ways humans have embellished life for millennia. All these are the fruits of the pursuit of excellence. Without them, world would be an inhospitable forest of desolate aridity.  

 

G.H. Hardy was one of the greatest Mathematician of twentieth century. In his twilight years (i.e., twilight of his creative life), he wrote an essay, A Mathematician’s Apology. Though the essay lays a defence for the practice of pure mathematics, it is an artist’s finest account of his art. All science, as mathematics, is a form of art. In the last section of the essay, Hardy sums up his arguments for practicing ‘real’ mathematics.

 

‘…solicitors and stockbrokers and bookmakers often lead comfortable and happy lives, and it is very difficult to see how the world is richer for their existence. Is there any sense in which I can claim that my life has been less futile than theirs? ...I have never done anything ‘useful’. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world. …I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.

The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.’

 

Pursuit of excellence creates an oasis in a desert of lacklustre mediocrity that surrounds us. Excellence is a touchstone for the many-hued ingenuity of human mind, a beacon for the sublime beauty human mind is capable of creating. I pray this quest remains alive amongst humans, if only to inform posterity of the meaning of a flawless creation and to equip it with a sensitivity to appreciate distinction. And thus, to afford mankind a refuge, where, as Bertrand Russell said (though he spoke of beauty in Mathematics), ‘one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.’