Not long after June and I married in 1957, I remember having the following words posted above my desk in our two-room apartment: “Don’t let the good become the enemy of the best.” I still think those are good and important words.
Seeking the Best
John Wesley, the outstanding 18th-century British Christian, sought to live by the compelling slogan: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
Those words certainly call people to positive action toward being and doing the best they possibly can rather than being complacent. Just because we are doing something good, that doesn’t mean we are doing all we should be doing.
The good becomes an enemy of the best whenever engaging in some good activity becomes an excuse for not doing more when that is possible. Similarly, the good becomes an enemy of the best when making contributions to some good cause becomes an excuse for not giving more when we are able to do that.
On the Other Hand
I first heard the words “Don’t let the good become an enemy of the best” in the 1950s, but I don’t remember hearing this balancing statement until around 2010: “Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.”
Perhaps I was so early and so long influenced by the wisdom of the former warning that I sometimes (or many times) made the mistake the latter statement warns against.
Sometimes I have been called a perfectionist—although I insist that I am not a perfectionist, I just want things to be done right! But my desire to do things right, or as nearly perfect as possible, has sometimes kept me from doing much of anything at all.
As always, the goal is seeking balance or a position in the middle, between the extremes. Satisfaction with the good can, indeed, be an enemy of the best. But preoccupation with being or doing the best can also, certainly, keep one from doing good.
Always striving for the best can lead to procrastination and to engaging in over-analysis that leads to paralysis. Both of those unhealthy characteristics, procrastination and over-analysis, are largely based on fear of falling short of the best.
So while maintaining that the good should never be an enemy of the best, we should, on the other hand, also never allow the best to be an enemy of the good. It certainly is counter-productive if our desire to do the best ends up keeping us from doing much good at all.
Seeking the Best without Being a Perfectionist
Being or doing the best we possibly can without falling into the trap of perfectionism is the goal we should strive for.
Perfectionism is a debilitating psychological weakness, and my insistence that we should never allow the good to become an enemy of the best should not be interpreted in such a way as to foster perfectionism.
We need to take seriously the suggestions in books by clinical psychologists, such as Steven Hendlin’s When Good Enough is Never Enough: Escaping the Perfection Trap (1992) and Monica Ramirez Basco’s Never Good Enough: Freeing Yourself from the Chains of Perfectionism (1999).
So this is the goal we should yearn for: never letting the good become an enemy of the best—but always seeking to be and to do the best without falling into debilitating perfectionism.
.jpg)