Author: Andrea Grassi

There’s one thing I knew but didn’t really realize until this night, and that thing is that during life we all strive to do our best.

Yes, even those people that you think are slacking are, in fact, trying their best.
Even if they are not doing their best, they are fighting every single day as we are, only on a different level (it’s not comparable with terms like “More” or “Less”).

When we say you can do better we are thinking about our version of better. The one that we would strive for.

Given that we could not even be compatible with each other the other thing to note is: “Aren’t we all struggling?”
Yes, we are. Each and every one of us is doing his or her best to live the life the best we can.
And we fail often.
Often the life beats us and we feel without hope, without future, without solutions to our problems.

This part of the story is the one that doesn’t appear outside.
Outside, we might “slack”. But inside there’s this emotional turmoil that dig inside us to damage even deeper.

It’s easy to say you can do better, right?
But what do we answer when we get the same question?
We have many reasons right? We have excuses, justifications, things that influenced the results.
We weren’t guilty, just unlucky.

If we think about it for a moment we could realize that we were doing our best like everyone else in the world.
And if you think about it the next time your boss (or my boss btw) makes you angry, you might just realize that we’re all in the same boat.

There isn’t any script for life, we just go with what we’ve got.
We do our best, and the result is the best we could have.

And for that we should be thankful, because the life we’re living is good even if it sucks.
We open our eyes every days and admire the beauty of the sun.
The work might be shitty but you know what? They are doing their best too.
Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to save the marriage, or while cheating they’re simply trying to be happy.

These are not excuses, these are the words that define our lives. I’m not trying to justify our actions, but we still do our best every day.
And that best, even if it’s not perfect, is our best, the maximum, the zenit.
It’s the top of our life up until now, it represents the beauty and the imperfection of human being.

Whatever you do, wherever you live, whichever you meet, remember: they’re doing their best.

I know I talked about this yesterday, but it’s still on my mind, so I thought “why not expand it even further?”

The idea to talk again about this came from a post of Davide Casali that I saw on Facebook.
He was talking about the fact that jr designer are ashamed to talk about their lack of skills.

Lack of skills is something we are born we. We need to learn to improve, to move forward.
That said, I can relate with those jr designers.
The fact is that the lack of skill is something that makes people feel unworthy,

It’s not anyone’s fault, but the fact that the lack of skills makes you less valuable is something profound in our society.
We look for numbers, for interesting lines, while we should focus on the ability to adapt and grow, the ability to go into deep focus, determination and so on.

Abilities that are within our reach and can be showed but are not so often discovered through common interviews.

So, the last question is: what should we do?
I guess it always winds down to do our best.

There are things that requires preparation.
Thinking about it, almost everything in life requires that.

You need to be prepared for an exam, for a child, for a marriage, for a job, for an interview.
All those things requires you to be prepared but sometimes you need to do it even if you’re not really prepared.

Preparation sometimes is all about mindset, not real true skill.
Is about being able to say “ok, I don’t know where this is going, but I can and want to handle it”.
Just like a child, you won’t have any preparation to what’s going to happen, yet you do it nonetheless.

That’s how life works.
Things happen, you live your life.
It’s not about how much preparation did you have, it’s all about your ability to handle the situation, to step up, to wake up every morning and know that you can do it.
Even if it’s overwhelming.

Preparation is required to avoid breaking things, but you always do things in an unprepared state because perfection can’t be achieved from a preparation point of view, you are always learning how to do things better, and that’s the beauty of it.

I am envious by nature. I don’t think of it as a stable part of my character but something I should work on.

This characteristic allows me to see many of the faces of envy.

Envy is often hidden, is something that burns within your stomach.
You don’t have a right name for it, because it just stays there, but there it is: envy.

You might not even realize it’s there, that’s what makes it so powerful.
If it ain’t there, why fix it in the first place?

After it stays in your stomach for a while, it might need a voice, your voice.
This is very similar to gossip, in fact I think gossip is somewhat related to envy itself.
Anyway, envy tries to talks through you.
You would like to express something, but that thought isn’t yours to begin with.

Envy, and many other negative emotions, try to take control of your body, of your voice.
They express through you invisibly.
And while this happens you think this is the right thing to do.
But tell me, every time your pride told you that you had to declare your rights, did it lead to a positive resolution in the future?

Negative emotions are simply negative, there are no ways they could be helpful to you, yet they persist.
They persist more than we do in real life (which is a shame).

Personally what I found helpful in improving this dark sides of my character is to not allow them to speak through me.
I guess it’s a first step, because obviously the optimal result would be to not think through me.

There’s an undeniable emotion when you do more, when more is asked and you know you have to step up the game.

That passion is what drives some people to create a better world.
I guess we’ve all been there, and sometimes I wonder if there’s a way to light that passion up again.

Sometimes work deprives us from joy, sometimes is an accelerator, something so powerful you would lose yourself into that.