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.” *

 

And here is Antonio Machado –

Slowly form nice neat letters; 

doing things well 

is more important than doing them. 

(Proverb XXI )

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 happiness is the highest good is (Greek eudaimonia, literally meaning ‘good spirits’), and that living and doing well are the same as being happy. Eudaimonia  is “excellence of performing the proper function.” – doing things well.

As Thoreau says: The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. ~ June 15, 1852

Do the things which lie 

nearest to you – but which are 

difficult to do.

January 12, 1852

You do what you must do 

             and ya do it well.

~ Zphx

See note to A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, What we do best or most perfectly ("What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice.")

*Here is the quote from Gandhi:

“Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, 

but it is important that you do it.”