Do it well

What is that lyric I am reminded of?

It’s Buckets of Rain, by Bob Dylan:

Life is sad

Life is a bust

All ya can do is do what you must

You do what you must do 

              and ya do it well

Rosanne Cash interviewed by Scott Simon in January 2024 said “I have this thing I wrote in my old datebook. I actually saw yesterday which said (paraphrasing  Gandhi)

"what you do will be insignificant, but it’s essential that you do it.” 

Here is the quote from Gandhi:

 

“Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, 

but it is important that you do it.” 

And here is Antonio Machado –

Slowly form nice neat letters; 

doing things well 

is more important than doing them. 

(There is No Road, page 92 )

Of course it all comes from Aristotle –

“. . . human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue . . .”

In Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle  explains that the highest good is happiness (Greek eudaimonia, literally meaning ‘good spirits’), and that living and doing well are the same as being happy.

Eudaimonia is better expressed as “excellence of performing the proper function.” – doing things well.

See note to A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, What we do best or most perfectly

Do the things which lie 

nearest to you – but which are 

difficult to do.

HDT