When I first read The Four Agreements and got to “Always Do Your Best”, I wasn’t convinced that was possible. It sounds like a tall order to some and to others it sounds like a copout.

 

In the book, Don Miguel Ruiz describes doing your best this way: “Under any circumstances, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is not going to be the same from one moment to the next. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick or sober as opposed to drunk.”

 

We are a culture that has been groomed to believe we need to work 12 hours a day (or more), skip our vacations, and worry that that isn’t enough. And yet we aren’t doing our best if we are missing out on our families, our friends, our life. As Arnold Zack wrote to Paul Tsongas in a letter, “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’”

 

When we overdo, we are expending too much energy and if we expend too much energy, we are certainly not doing our best. I remember interviewing for a management job with AT&T on the 70th Floor of the World Trade Center. I was a fish out of water. I’d been living on the East Coast for a year and although I had certainly visited Manhattan, the financial district is its own beast. The man interviewing me told me he expected me to work until 7pm every night. I knew that wasn’t going to work for me, so I mustered the courage to ask him why. I then proceeded to tell him that if and when it was necessary I would work late, however, I was good at managing my time and was quite sure I could complete everything required of me by 5pm. To my surprise and probably his, he hired me.

 

I think doing our best is about having Grace. Ernest Holmes describes Grace as, “Grace is the givingness of Spirit to Its Creation and is not a special law, but a specialized one. In other words, Grace is, but we need to recognize it. It is not something God imposed upon us but is the logical result of the correct acceptance of life and of a correct relationship to the Spirit. We are saved by Grace to the extent that we believe in, accept, and seek to embody, the Law of Good; for the Law of Good is ever a Law of Liberty and never one of limitation. Limitation is not a thing, not an entity, but a belief. Freedom is a Divine Reality.”

 

When we Always Do (Y)Our Best, we are allowing ourselves to experience Grace. Not everything needs to be done now. Not everything is your responsibility. Not everything gets tied up pretty with a bow. Life can be messy and when you do your best during the messiest parts; well, that is true Grace.

Blessings on your journey,
Rev. Gayle