Mark KennedyMy motto is: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
I know. It’s heresy in our culture to embrace imperfection. But, hey, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 57 years, it’s that the pursuit of perfection is way overrated.
I was thinking about this last Sunday night watching Peyton Manning in Super Bowl 50. Manning faced a third and eight late in the game. Earlier in his career, when he pulled his inferior teams along like a plow horse, he would have undoubtedly tried to zip a pass up the field for a first down.
Last Sunday, Manning instead called a safe running play that had little chance to gain a first down. Aware of his physical limitations, he chose not to risk a game-changing turnover, but to leave it to his dominant defense to win the game. Ultimately his patience worked, and his team went on to prevail in the Super Bowl. If Manning was unspectacular, it was OK. His post-game beer tasted just as good.
There’s nobility in sacrificing your ego for the greater good. Too bad most people don’t reach this conclusion until they’ve done themselves great harm with corrosive, perfectionist thinking.
Another axiom I like is:”Want what you have.” This doesn’t mean you have to always “settle,” but it does mean that contentment is a state of mind worth cultivating.
One way we can teach our kids contentment is to nudge them toward competence instead of always positioning them for perfection. Perfect grades. Perfect career. Perfect family. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
We need to relax.
For instance, the other day my 14-year-old son overheard me talking about how a local car dealer told me that he couldn’t find good auto mechanics. Despite salaries approaching $60,000 a year, he said, not enough kids were willing to go through a one-year certification course at Chattanooga State Community College.
My son, hearing the story, chimed in. “Maybe I should do that,” he said. “I could get a good job first, and then go to college after that.”
His eyes were bright with excitement.
At that point, the suburban dad in me is supposed to raise the bar, forcibly recalibrate my son’s goals, urge him to take a few steps up the career ladder and become a doctor or lawyer. But I also know this: While the professions are great, a doctor’s life can be crushingly hard and a law degree is no guarantee of secure employment.
Actually, becoming an auto mechanic with a degree in geriatric psychology might be the perfect career path for the 21st century.
Which brings me to my bright idea. Instead of grooming kids for “perfect” careers, why not merge vocational training with academic pursuits and produce a new generation of scholar-tradesmen?
We are familiar with the term scholar-athletes, why not widen the circle? Our country could use a few more poet-electricians, economist-plumbers or theology school-HVAC repair techs. Instead of requiring college students to have a couple of minors, why not make sure each bachelor’s degree candidate also has a trade certification?
Knowing that they have an in-demand job skill upon graduation, along with their bachelor’s degree, would make paying back those college loans a lot easier. It would also be good unemployment insurance for the times when their professional training didn’t pan out.
We already sort have a model of this. Countless first-generation information technology workers were former English majors who taught themselves how to write computer code.
More broadly, blurring the lines between “blue collar” and “white collar” might actually be good for the country to reduce some of the class friction that seems to be plaguing us.
Who knows, we might even form a more perfect union. And that’s a bit of perfection we could all support.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.