Demand the Best

A reflection for the new year about my dog, my son, a classic quote from Pam Beesly, and how sometimes life changes on a dime.

Epictetus wrote, “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”

I think some people go their whole lives without ever truly demanding the best from themselves. Wasted potential is everywhere.

This new year I’ve felt a bigger shift than normal. Like I’m finally ready to demand my best.

Though we’re only a few days in, I’m cautiously optimistic that the shift will be durable because it started a while back, with two moments that brought me to tears.

One was in December, when I was putting my dog’s cone around her neck to prevent her from licking the tumor growing on her left hind leg. I realized that, if the cancer progressed the way the oncologist said it would, there would never be another coneless day. There was no going back. This was the new normal now.

She doesn’t know what’s happening, of course. I often wonder whether that makes it easier or harder, blissfully unaware or hopelessly ignorant. At least she doesn’t regret taking her coneless days for granted.

But I did. And I do regret it.

I can’t stop thinking about what my own versions of coneless days will inevitably be—points in time when my life will change forever and there will be no going back. There will only be the regret of taking for granted whatever was lost for so long.

The other moment was a month or two earlier, when my one-and-a-half-year-old son had just moved from the infant room at his daycare to the toddler room.

One day, as we were getting ready to go home, an infant-room caregiver who adored Hugo walked by us in the hall. She had been one of his favourite people. He would light up in the morning when he saw her, lurching forward from my arms to hers with a grin from ear to ear.

Only this time he didn’t. Instead he was shy and pulled away, suddenly uncertain about this woman he had delighted in the week before.

I guess that’s how these things go. Perhaps caregivers get used to loving and letting go. Or maybe, I suspect, it never really gets any easier.

Either way, it broke my heart. They got a few short months together, and now it was suddenly over. He was already falling in love with the next bunch of caregivers that he saw every day. It was all so abrupt.

Think of all the people you’ve liked or loved, or genuinely enjoyed interacting with, that you never really got to say goodbye to. All the caregivers, classmates, colleagues and casual acquaintances.

Relationships suddenly end all the time. People are here one day and gone the next. Life is an unrelenting series of unceremonious goodbyes. Last times rarely come labelled.

And yet, how often do we take the time we have with the people we love for granted? How often do we act as if there will always be another time? How often do we lose sight of how fleeting these things can truly be?

How often do we wait to demand the best or make the most?

In the season finale of the Office, Pam Beesly reflects, “It took me so long to do so many important things. It's hard to accept that I spent so many years being less happy than I could have been…go after what you want and act fast because life just isn't that long.”

Sometimes I think we fail to demand the best because we don’t want to accept that we wasted so much time settling for less.

The feeling of having wasted time leads us to waste more. It weighs us down, holds us back, cripples our efforts to strive for better.

The new year gives us the chance to take that weight off our shoulders. It creates an opportunity to make change.

Since the pandemic started, I haven’t been at my best. The lockdowns took a toll on my mental health. Adjusting to life with two children has been exhausting. Unbelievably amazing and joyous in so many ways, but undeniably exhausting. I developed some bad habits that have been hard to entirely unwind. It’s been hard to make the transition from surviving to thriving.

But I know mere existence is not enough to satisfy my soul. I know I’m capable of contributing so much more—to my wife, my kids, my family and friends, my larger community and the companies I work for. I know my days can and should be filled with laughter and creativity, gratitude and joy.

I know I can live in better alignment with my goals and my values. I know I can get my daily activities to drive harder at who I want to be and where I want to go.

I don’t want to regret taking the life I have now for granted before it inevitably changes in some fundamental and irreversible way. I don’t want to regret not taking advantage of the precious time I get to enjoy with the people I love before it all unceremoniously ends.

I already regret not demanding the best of myself sooner. And I refuse to live another year where I don’t. I can’t and I won’t.

Easier said than done, no doubt. I know life isn’t so simple, and I have no idea where you’re at with your current day-to-day habits or mindset or values or goals. I'm not telling you to do anything and I'm not pretending any of it is easy.

I just know that there are moments in time when the future no longer resembles the past. And that creates both opportunities and tragedies.

Just because you've tried and failed in the past, doesn't mean you're doomed.

Just because you've always gotten another year to try again, doesn't mean you’ll always get another.

Things are always the same, until they aren’t. This time is never different, until it is.

There will never be a better time to demand the best.

Steele