here is no substitute for excellence.  Not love; not equality.  Of course, there are lots of tasks that do not call for great intellectual dexterity.  Sometimes all that is needed is simple determination and faithfulness.  Perhaps the sanitation worker is a case in point.  Perhaps the mail carrier is a case in point.  There are unmistakably valuable tasks that cannot be defined in terms of extraordinary excellence as such.  If you asked me—and it is obvious that you didn’t—an automobile mechanic exhibits more ability than the typical sanitation worker or mail carrier.  I could easily enough perform the tasks of a mail carrier, but being a good mechanic is utterly beyond me. 

Unfortunately, the self-esteem movement has made a mockery out of things—turning everything into an incredible form of excellence.  There are even graduate ceremonies nowadays for leaving kindergarten as if this were some sort of excellence on the child’s part. 

In a most interesting New York Times' article entitled “How Not to Talk to Your Kids,” there is the sudden recognition of what commonsense has told us all along, namely that the belief that one is naturally of considerable talent is no substitute for hard work.  Accordingly, while it is wonderful for parents to praise their children, doing so can in fact be counter productive when it seems that parents are more interested in their children having the label of being smart than actually being productive. 

I have never known any extremely successful person who did note work tirelessly, whether we are talking about scholarship or entertainment.  Being smart is no substitute for the aspiration to excel.

The explanation for this is quite simple.  To excel one must be able to overcome various impediments and roadblocks that one encounters along the way.  One must be able stare down disappointments.  These are traits that have nothing whatsoever to do with being smart as such, but an awful lot to do with sheer determination. 

Thus, parents who are pre-occupied with their children having the label smart in fact do their children more harm than good.  Likewise a society that places more emphasis upon “affirming” everyone than actual raw determination itself does its citizens more harm than good. 

In passing, it is worth noting in this regard that the goal of racial equality admits of considerable distortion, in that people are more in search of the label “smart” than in fact doing something excellent. 

There is no appellation that can replace the experience of succeeding.  There is no affirmation quite like the affirmation that only success can bring.  A nation of people looking for affirmation shorn of blood, sweat, and tears is a nation of people setting themselves up for a fall.

Most derailments in life can be offset if only people should be determined enough.  But when all that we have to underwrite our sense of worth is none other than an appellation shorn of the experience of success than derailments seem rather like immutable objects rather than merely the challenge that they often are to find another route. 

As I pen the words to this blog, I am considering the people whom I deeply admire.  Strikingly, it is true of every single one of them that their determination is one of the deep reasons for why I admire them so—and not just their accomplishments.  For it is their accomplishments in the face of so many obstacles that gives their accomplishments a certain luster. 

Increasingly, it is supposed that love and acceptance means lavishing a person with praise.  So it is only if we are talking about love gone awry.  This is because love at its best does not just make it possible for a person to believe that he can go on, but it gives the individual the strength so to act. 

Love is steadfast.  It is long suffering.  To love another deeply is to be committed to standing by and with that person through thick and thin.  Self-love, then, is to have the wherewithal to nourish oneself through thick and thin—to have the wherewithal to find a way to make a way out of no way. 

For precisely this reason, love at its best necessarily involves constructive criticism and restraint when it comes to praise.  Love at its best is both encouraging and demanding.  Nay, it encourages by being demanding.  After all, one of the most remarkable signs that a person can have that another believes that he is capable of an excellence is none other than that he is asked by the other to produce that excellence.  Thus, far from being incompatible with love, demands often stand as an enduring sign of love—the evidence that those who love us see in us the gifts that we do not quite see in ourselves. 

Surely, this is what parenting and teaching at their best are both about.  Neither is about endless and so meaningless affirmation. 

How did we ever come to think that?  The answer I suspect is that we have mistakenly supposed that we could speed things up, and so that we could pass over the actual experience of excellence by simply reiterating over and over again that we think well of a person.  Alas, good development is rather like good cooking, in that they both take time.  Shortcuts invariably give us inferior results. 

It is striking how much wisdom the past continues to serve up.  A key precept from an era gone by was that praise should be used sparingly.  Following that precept produced a nation of people who found the will to do their job under the most horrendous of circumstances.  

Excellence needs a foundation if it is to have durable and stable place in our lives.  Praise at its best enabels us to harvest those experiences that will nourish us for a lifetime.   Surely love that misses the mark in this regard leaves much to be desired.  Perhaps even love itself.