Academe (where a weathered historian shares)
Quality means executing a task well, with intention and purpose. Quality, if you’ve read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at some point in your life, you might associate with attempts to reconcile the absolute with the relative, in other words, with over-thinking or even madness. But it does not have to mean that (or if you think that was the message of the book, it may be time for a re-read).
Quality means, as Phaedrus sees, caring about what you do and how you do it and anyone can strive to achieve Quality. Quality requires the right to fail and to try again. Quality requires being present in the moment so that the self fades into the background and the completion of the task to the best of one’s ability is the highest priority; the self does not disappear because there is a cognizance of the process and the result. Quality means the result is judged, by the self, according to standards that have been tested.
The absence of Quality could well be an anti-value as it seems that all values (i.e., those things that are or lead to good) require something to have been done well, with intention and purpose.
Quality, what is it good for and who is it for? Everything and everybody is the short answer.
I hope that a little bit of quality was achieved here.
With Critters, It’s Personal
Baby Bunnies, Part II
Last we saw our brave baby bunnies, they were all five huddled together in an overturned flower pot. They had survived a hail storm and were both curious and content. Curious about new challenges and content to be huddled and bundled together.
The world seemed to calm. The air settled. The hail melted. The grass grew. Mama visited. And baby bunnies began to explore.