Bettering Your Best

 

 

Sounds impossible?

 But it’s not:

Bettering you best

I mean.

 

We know the little maxim:

“Good, better best

Never let it rest

Till you make your good better

And your better best”.

 

Your “good” is worse

Than your “better”

And your “better” is worse

Than your “best”.

 

“You can make your “good better”

And your “better best”.

 

Likewise

Your “best” is worse

Than “bettering your best”,

So that even when at your “best”

You should never let it rest.

 

Today I am at my “best”

Tomorrow I can be “better”

One must aim for improvement

At every point of the ladder.

 

“Best” is always relative

To one’s own development

And so as a person matures

With the former he can’t be content.

 

 

Take for instance an athlete

That runs his quickest time,

Today that might be his best

But tomorrow

“Better” is on his mind.

 

Then he runs a little quicker

It’s “better” than before,

Yesterday that was his “best”

But today his “better” was even more.

 

As it is in sports

So it is in living,

Never settle for your “best” today

Tomorrow “better” you should be doing.

 

Because “bettering your best”

Must be everyday,

“Bettering your best”

Must be the desired way.

 

A personal “best” is temporary

For “bettering” it is an endeavour,

Hence ascending must be the thrust

For at the top is hard labour.

 

“Good, better, best

Never let it rest

Till you make your good better

And your better best”.

 

Make “best” what used to be

For it’s about “bettering your best”

And even when you “better you best”

Still never let it rest.

 

 

When at the top of a ladder

Create another rung

Or better still my aspiring friend

Turn the ladder upside down

 

That is, treat it as a beginning

And not the end of the climb,

Several more rungs to conquer

A new “best” must be on your mind.

 

Stewart Russell © August 2018