“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
– T. S. Eliot
“You’ve gone too far this time!” It’s kinda hard to imagine that being a complimentary exclamation, huh? Eliot was a master of succinctly making a compelling point, which, as an essayist and poet, he likely found to be a career-enhancing quality.
Like many succinctly compelling points, context is important.
Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet astronaut who was the first man in space, Neil Armstrong (one small step for man….on the moon….cool, right?) and Roger Bannister, the first to run a mile in less than four minutes are all examples of the best of Eliot’s point. We’d be earth-bound slow pokes without those guys showing us what could be done, right?
Yet, if our intentions aren’t good, and our powers are being used for evil instead of good — the saying is no less true, it’s just destructive. Taking someone you love, rely on, cherish or need for granted? We’d probably not see how that story ends — how far we get before we’re left alone. Protecting the status quo at all costs, running off innovators and people who want to know “why?” is another arena where trail-blazing produces unhappy endings.
One tenet of the Daily Difference is that intent matters more than content. And, it holds here. If our intent is for good, then we ought to risk going too far. We ought to risk failing, because only then will we see that we got well past the old standard, and re-shaped how folks will face the future. If our intent is for good, we ought to find out how far we can go.
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