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

 

Finally

 

 

I tried to believe it

But I really could not

I had covered all ends

But I still got caught.

 

Later I discovered

I was set up by a friend

A straight case of envy

And that was the end.

 

Someone came calling

And I answered the knock

On opening the door

I was confronted by a cop.

 

It made no use running

He had me good

And he read me my rights

As a good cop would.

 

For a moment or so

I considered a bluff

But before I could decide

I was in handcuffs.

 

A police car ride

And placed on remand

Then off to the Law Courts

In a new brand van.

 

Guilty as charge

Then came the sentence

Seven years hard labour

Despite my repentance.

I know I was set up

Of that I have no doubt

I was planning to settle that

When I got out.

 

However, I thought it over

And I plan to go straight

Cause this prison life

I most definitely hate.

 

Finally, I was caught

And I got my comeuppance

And all I have to show

Is a prison sentence.

 

Stewart Russell © September 7, 2021