A Price Worth Paying
Dr. Mary C. McDonald
The heavyweight champion boxer, Joe Louis, once said, “Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.” It’s true. Everyone wants to succeed, to be really good at something, to reach a goal. However, not everyone is willing to pay the price in the present to become the best version of themselves in the future. Whether it is in your job, your family life, your relationships, or your spiritual life, it is not about being the best; it is about doing your best that makes the difference. It is not about always being right; it is about doing the right thing that matters. It is the hard work, commitment, and delayed gratification that makes you a leader in whatever you do, wherever you are. But that kind of leadership is always a risk. It has a price, and the price is often the resentment of others, who, filled with envy or fear, prefer to gossip, ridicule and criticize you just for being committed to excellence. All your efforts at continuous improvement may make you an unwitting target for those who seek to diminish you in order to build up themselves. This is nothing new. Your critics are like those whose criticism of Jesus turned a triumphant Palm Sunday into a Good Friday filled with horrific events. Yet, it didn’t stop Jesus from His work, so why should it stop you from yours? Following Christ’s example of choosing to trust God, of continuing to walk in love, and peace, is not easy. Just trying to follow it makes you a leader. However, there is a penalty for that kind of leadership that you might just as well get beyond if your goal really is continuous improvement. One of the best descriptions of that struggle came from an advertisement for Cadillac written by Theodore Mac Manus, that ran in the Saturday Evening Post on January 2, 1915. It read:
"The Penalty of Leadership"
"In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership is vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man's work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work is mediocre, he will be left severely alone - if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work is stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a Mountback, long after the world would had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy - but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions - envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains - the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live--lives"
Whether the standard of your work is your own continuous improvement, or the work that you do for the improvement of the conditions of others, remember, doing your best could result in a Good Friday experience. Do your best anyway. It might be more difficult that way, but without that Good Friday there would be no Easter Sunday Resurrection, no new life, no best version of yourself that you seek. Everyone wants to go to heaven, as Joe Louis reminded us. Now, what are you willing to endure to get there?
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