Problems and Opportunities: Who needs ’em?

Duke Ellington, an American jazz legend, was born in 1899 and once said, “A problem is a chance for you to do your best” (Duke Ellington). Here he proclaimed that, upon coming to a problem, it was an opportunity to try your best, or so I believe. I also believe that this is rather narrow. You shouldn’t look to only try your best in a problematic situation, but at all times you should try your best, unless otherwise inappropriate. Mr. Ellington saying this was probably him trying to get some more fame, but also trying to be inspirational.

I don’t wholly disagree with his statement, however, as trying your best when faced with a problem is definitely what you should do, be it you’re out of milk and you need to go buy some more, or your house is on fire, you should put your all into putting it out. Mr. Duke Elligton says that a problem is a chance or an opportunity to do the best you can do, which I don’t completely believe is what you should do.

You should always do your best, problem or not, out of milk or working on a blog post, either way, you should be putting forth optimal effort. I will say, though, that through my saying this, I don’t always put forth my best, as I get gold in professional Olympic Procrastination, and am rather lazy, so I do a little above a bare minimum. That doesn’t mean I can’t have opinions though, and I do. What Mr. Duke should have said instead, a more inspirational quote would be “Life is an opportunity to always try your hardest (unless you are lazy or are in a condition in which putting forth any effort more than breathing [unless comatose] would cause extreme discomfort.)”

I myself once had a problem that proffered a chance at trying my best. In fact, I have had several. The mudroom at my house rapidly gets messy, because we throw bottles and cans into an overflowing industrial canister, cardboard all willy nilly, and go to the dump roughly, once a month. Quite often my parents will ask me to go and clean it up a bit. Put trash in its proper place, get bottles and cans into trash bags, and get cardboard packed into the car to take to the dump. I don’t always put forth optimal effort in this scenario, due to it not requiring 100% of my strength to dump cardboard into the backseat of a car, but it is an opportunity.

I also have stories of problems that I did put my best into. The attic at my house is the place where we put 90% of our holiday items up there, as well as other things that just don’t simply fit anywhere else in the house. To get up into the attic, you have to scale a rickety ladder that I wouldn’t trust with a plate of lunch. I get up and quite often have to move semi-heavy boxes up and down the ladder into or out of the attic. The boxes are heavy, and because of gravity, I have to put in the effort to get the boxes where they need to be. In this case, I am putting forth my best to not drop the box and damage everything. I forgot to mention this, but the ladder is right above the stairway to our basement, so any fall will be quite unfun for all parties. In summary, Monsieur Ellington’s statement of “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” (Duke Ellington) Is a great and truly inspirational quote (sarcasm) and I do believe that his saying is good, but it could be expanded upon.

“Be kind. Do your best.” by Wesley Fryer is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich