I don't want to do well anymore

When I was putting together my life story I realized something about myself. I always want to do everything well. In school, in sports, in family, in giving gifts, in making purchases, in choosing careers, in picking colors for a room, in making a bed -- in all things I do, in every facet of who I am, I want to do well. I didn't see anything immediately wrong about this ethic, and it struck me that such a phrase could so completely and accurately sum up how I have approached my life. Then in Church on Sunday, it struck me that doing well was not a great way to try to live my life which may seem obvious or confusing, so let me go back and define what I mean by doing well.

When I think of doing well, I typically think of doing better than most other people. If you are doing well in a class, you are probably doing above the mean. If you are doing well financially, you are better off than most people. If you are doing well personally, you are happy and probably have friends. Those ideas for a life direction are all pretty shallow, highly relative, and lacking a divine direction. In fact they are very much the ideas that social psychologists use to describe generally what people try to do to feel happy.

However, I find that this way of doing things generally does not lead me to happiness for three reasons. First by trying to do well in all of these different arenas, my life becomes very fragmented and conflicting. What I need to do in order to "do well" at work may not jive with what I need to do to "do well" by my body or "do well" with Jennifer. When these conflicts arise, I can become frustrated because I just can't do well everywhere. Second, it's impossible to "do well" all the time; I will make a mistake. Third, this place of doing well is not a forgiving land. If I don't do well then I am bad and you need to fix it in a hurry by any means. There is not grace to cover, just a demand for perfection

So I have pooped on the statue, but what can I erect in it's place? There is an adage "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." I've heard it many times in my life, and every time it strikes me. Essentially what it is saying is that there exist good things which we should just do no matter what. I want to cling to this idea: there are fundamentally good things which we can do.

But I want to go even further to say that there are not really fundamentally good actions, but fundamentally good reasons or motives for acting. Trying to "do well" is not one of them. Good reasons for acting are probably very few. The two that I can think of for certain are love, and the glory of God (and maybe justice and mercy).

These motives can inform my actions across all areas of my life, and if I live by them can provide the freedom to act poorly in certain areas of my life when I need to act poorly in one area or another. They can inform forgiveness when I am bad and give me grace to understand my weaknesses. Ultimately, they will help me to be less neurotic and do all of those things which are necessary to life. So I think I will seek to give up doing well and try to live by pure motives.