excellence is the ultimate meme.

(my original title for this post (until I wrote the very last line of the post and liked it so much I made it the title as well): jason bourne & greatness.)

On Sunday night around 11ish I went to the theater and watched the movie The Bourne Ultimatum. It was awesome. No, it was excellent. The acting, direction, writing, action sequences, music, timing– everything was just spectacular. Since then I’ve read a few articles about how well Matt Damon, the lead actor playing Bourne, and Paul Greengrass, the director of the film, worked together and hailing the job the entire team did in putting together the movie.

I’m a huge fan of excellence. Be it the Bourne trilogy, or the few tv shows I’ve watched: The Wire, LOST, (or the early seasons of) The West Wing– when I find something that is just amazing, I find this to be bliss. I’m just a fan of excellence overall. When I go to a restaurant and the food is good and the service is great– everyone goes the extra mile, and all the little things have been looked after. When I visit a website that does all of the simple things– you know those things that make it clear to you that they’ve already thought about it so that you wouldn’t have to– those websites make me happy. I’m this way about most (excellent) things. They not only make me happy, they inspire me.

Which brings me in a totally random, non-cohesive manner to the thought that’s been bouncing around my head for what feels like forever. Do you really appreciate the things that you do with excellence? And more importantly do you appreciate the things that others do with excellence that just blow you away because you think there’s no way that you could ever do it? An example coming next…

A friend of mine is an ex-musician. Now that he’s all grown-up, has a wife and a (small) litter of kids, he knew that he had to give up the dream of making it big and get a corporate gig (rhyme completely coincidental), which is how I met him. Over the past few years I’ve gone and seen him play at different bars and at some point in the past few years it him me how amazing him playing the guitar/keyboard/insert-practically-every-musical-instrument-here is to me. It’s something I can’t even fathom since I’ve been gifted with being utterly tone deaf. So I appreciate that skill in others.
I’ve played basketball practically for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, while it was clearer to me that others (read: everyone) were better than me, I never appreciated it. I still get out and play ball about once a week, and now I truly appreciate the different ways the people I ball with do really, really well. I can go on and on, but it’s everything from great swimmers, runners, public speakers, programmers, singers (not Sanjaya), that totally fascinate me. Why? Because they’re so good at what they do, and usually I’m so bad at it.

Pay attention to your world. Notice what others do really (really) well. Think about how you would do the same thing. Or if you think you could even do the same thing. Or if you’d want to do it. Maybe you’ll try it. Maybe you’ll just appreciate it. But you should definitely notice it. Excellence is all around us. And I’ve found that as I notice excellence and pay more attention to it, I appreciate it more and (hopefully) generate a little more of the excellence in the small areas that I’m capable.

Excellence is the ultimate meme.