“If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media.
This applies to every choice we make. Not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention…
The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

We have the opportunity to do something with our lives. We may reach closer to personal excellence (arete) and achieve that which we’d only imagined. Arete looks different for each of us, but we know when we see a glimmer of it in those who rise to meet it. And it stands to reason that if we wish to get closer to personal excellence ourselves, we must also rise to meet greatness where it resides. We must climb beyond where we’ve been and work towards it.

I have some exceptional people in my life who are currently outraged by the things happening in the United States. I grow quiet when they talk about it, not because I’m not also outraged, but because focusing on the worst in others takes our focus away from our own climb to greater things. It recalibrates us for outrage.

The point isn’t to ignore it all and just let it fester, it’s to grow into one’s own potential. We are what we focus on the most. We mustn’t be dragged down by putrefaction and the strategic dismantling of our higher collective vision. We are builders of greatness—don’t ever lose sight of that. We must take to the heights, now more than ever.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine

This is a time in our lives when we may achieve greatly, whatever that means for us. The world is more frustrating than ever, but it’s always been so. In our darkest days of human history, those who would reach for personal excellence found a way to climb. And so too must we in our time.

Climbing requires energy and a level of focus that comes from inspiration. We are what we repeatedly do, and surely we are also what we repeatedly consume. To actualize excellence, to bring it into existence within ourselves and our work, we must develop a taste for it. Nurture a deep hunger to do more with our brief time before it all goes away. We may find excellence throughout human history, including today. There it all is, hiding in plain sight: we must simply lift our gaze to find it. Having seen it in others and in their contribution, we may then climb to meet it ourselves.