For there to be any value in a given pursuit, there needs to be an overarching principle. I was discussing this with my wife the other day in regards to parenting. We all want to be good parents, but how do we know what a good parent is? My comment to her was that we have been getting continually worse since the day our first one was born. Seem negative to you?
Here's the thing. When a child is born it needs a grand total of about four things; (we'll say, for sake of argument) food, sleep, plus diaper changes, baths, whatever. Quite tangible things. Obviously, there's the things like nurturing human contact, but these are provided in the course of supplying the basic needs. If parents failed to provide these four things, the newborn infant would die. I'm proud to say we went four for four. Perfect parenting exemplified.
It is in the nature of children that they don't stay in infanthood very long. Eventually these miniature humans have the ability to communicate and move autonomously. They move around, then in and out of, the house. They disagree on the rules about playing with the neighbors, express distaste for the supper menu, and resist bath and bed times; things that are a part of developing their own identity and personality.
What is the definition of good parenting now? How do you discipline a kid without making him feel like he's evil, especially when his behavior seems evil? How do you demonstrate love when every conversation is an argument; and it starts to seem like the the whole day is one long argument, and that arguing is the whole point, just with periodic subject changes?
We're genuinely curious about what good parenting is, so when we get told that we need to connect with our kids, delight in our kids, feel for our kids, and that we're not compelled to join every argument we're invited to; we pay attention. But that's a tall order to put into practice. If you extrapolate that over eighteen years and look at those eighteen years all at once, it seems impossible. On a daily basis, it's certainly more complex than changing diapers or giving the baby a bottle.
As parents of young school and preschool age kids, we now get to the end of every day with less assurance that we've checked all the boxes. There'll often be an interaction that will stick out, an exchange we wish we could do over. We're just not as good at parenting as we used to was.
If I were to chart our personal growth as parents, it would be a line that started from the bottom left corner and extended at an upward angle toward the right side of the page. There would be another line that would start at the same place and extend toward the right at a steeper, upward trajectory. This line would represent the ideal parents, the ones we aim to be. It is made up of all the knowledge we accumulate that informs how we parent, but that we never measure up to.
This ideal is the overarching principal. It is the parent we aim to be in order to provide a balanced home and a nurturing environment. Throw life into the mix, and the decisions we make on the fly don't always measure up. Examine our performance at a given moment of the day, and what our aim actually appears as could look more like the needle on a magnetic compass, dancing around as we try and hold it level. It seems unstable, but because the compass is calibrated toward magnetic north—our identified ideal—it occasionally settles on that heading.
The human rationale is often geared to lower the standard or undermine the ideal. People who feel bad for their performance don't like the judgy-ness that idealism exerts over them, so they redefine the objective a little. We tell ourselves that compromise is okay, carbs are a good energy source, and technology a suitable way to entertain our kids. This does a good job of making our lives easier in the short term.
But the key to happiness is not ease. Being free to pursue happiness isn't what makes people happy, in spite of what the American Constitution would infer. Happiness is a byproduct of meaningful lives. To live meaningfully, one has to identify things that have real value, and work towards them.
Science tells us that measurable progress toward a goal, not goal achievement, is what gives us positive emotion. It is how God designed us. This is why lowering the standard we've set for ourselves is never going to be the long term answer. Yes, expectations have to be tempered in the moment, but the overarching principle needs to be a high bar.
The more valuable the objective, the more meaningful it will be to move towards it. This reminds me of where Jesus says, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Mt 5:48). God's perfection is surely a high bar for us to aim toward, and one we will never attain. But the pursuit of godliness can never be compromised. At the end of the day, we are still exhorted to be perfect from the lips of Christ Himself.
Don't make the ideal, or idealism, the scapegoat of your happiness. Become intimately familiar with it. Whether this is God—the highest Standard of all—or the kind of parents we would really like to be; knowing what should be is not the enemy of our success. Viktor Frankl says that for us to realize our full potential, we have to aim at what is better than our full potential. He compares it to flying a plane in a cross wind, and having to aim upwind of our destination in order to end up where we want to be. Having a healthy understanding of, and relationship with the ideal is the key to meaningful, happy living.