I’m thinking about Yoda on this day. He once said, “The greatest teacher, failure is.” I say this because I’m here to remind you about a historical anniversary. There it was, this morning, in my news feed.
On this date, in 1964, the Beatles recorded “Leave My Kitten Alone.”
I like the Beatles. I’m not a diehard fan, but I sure do enjoy a lot of their music. Obviously, as in this case, some songs more than others. Before this morning, I had never heard of this Beatle release, “Leave My Kitten Alone.”
In fact, I had to look up the lyrics. I’ll just give you the first few lines, here:
You better leave my kitten all alone,
You better leave my kitten all alone.
But I told you big fat bulldog,
You better leave her alone.
For the most part, the song rinses, and repeats. Even after I read the lyrics, the thing still did not seem familiar to me, so I gave it a listen on Spotify. And once I did, I understood why. It wasn’t their best effort, in my humble musical opinion.
But it made me wonder how that group of four could write this in the midst of their otherwise writing-genius. Songs like “A Day in the Life,” “Yesterday,” “Hey Jude,” “Eleanor Rigby,” or “Let It Be.” Then there is one of my favorites, sometimes known as Side 2 of Abbey Road, it is, “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” “The End” (September 1969) — those seven mini-songs woven together, seamlessly, into one musical movement. An extraordinary one.
You better leave my kitten alone.
It is a good reminder to the rest of us that we are not always at our best.
I used to play collegiate softball. On my best days, I would be fearless and unstoppable on defense. But other days, the softball gods would be favoring other players, and balls would careen off my body in every direction.
As they say. To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Humans were never intended to be perfect. We make mistakes. We spill the milk and we crumble the cookies. We write songs like “You Better Leave My Kitten Alone.”
However, there are times in life when we are expected to be flawless. And we come to expect that of others too. This becomes apparently clear in things like business operations, or in purchased goods. For instance. When we buy a vacuum cleaner, we expect it to operate correctly. If it does not, we expect the people who sold the vacuum cleaner to function perfectly and correct the situation. There are times when this fairy tale does not come true.
In greater proportions, we expect this of our health care providers. If we go to a surgeon to have a necessary operation, we don’t want to hear that he is less than perfect. We wholly expect him to succeed. We probably don’t want to hear his batting average, or if he’s ever written any kitten songs in the OR.
But to the greatest degree, we want our leaders to succeed. Take the President of the United States, as a case in point. We expect them to make good choices for the whole of our country, to defend our rights, to uphold justice, and display equanimity. We don’t expect them to say, and I quote, “It is what it is,” when asked about the 160,000 dead Americans, having fallen from COVID-19.
I understand that sometimes humans fail. As I said, we are not perfect. We write bad lyrics. We swing and we miss. But at times when we are doing things such as juggling chainsaws, or running a country, we expect better performances.
I know that I am not capable of doing either of those things, so I leave it to the more experienced, the smarter, the more adept, to take on those tasks. We are each made with different abilities. We look for greatness from our leaders, and our chainsaw jugglers.
As for me, as for us, we can go about our every moments, doing our best. And that is enough. On some days that might be great, on other days it may be less. Either way, we know we are trying.
Back to Yoda. He said a lot of wise things, but the one I always disagree with is this: “Do or do not. There is no try.”
I think there is trying. I’m trying right now.
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“But man’s duty is to try and endeavour, success depends upon chance and environments.”
― Bhagat Singh
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“Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”
― Roy T. Bennett
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“He tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron
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