Deliberateness ...

Is mediocrity acceptable? Is "average" an okay achievement - or is that a paradox? I mean, if one is "average", has one achieved anything? The reason I ask is, I live in a household in which,"It was the least I could do" is the phrase I hear all too often. I have never tried to do the least in anything - I do not even understand what that means. My standards are high in all things - my home, my children, their academics, my accomplishments. I may not have been so self-aware, so self-actualized earlier in my life, but since I have awakened to the need for deliberateness, I have come to realize the need to have goals in all things. Even mundane, seemingly unimportant tasks need to be planned and prioritized in order to be accomplished. If I do not put "cleaning the toilet " on my chore list, it may not get done. And while I am cleaning the toilet, I figure I may as well scrub the floor around the toilet, and shine the mirror over the sink, and scrub the outer edge of the shower stall, where all the dust seems to gather. In other words, while "clean the toilet" could simply be accomplished with a swish of a paper towel and some cleanser across the seat, it is not good enough. And, one day, when my kids are older, and have jobs and families and, prayerfully, homes of their own, it is my hope that they will remember the cleanliness of their childhood home - the warmth and fresh fragrance, the tidiness, and the way they helped keep it that way - and realize that they too want more than average, more than acceptable, and more than it being the least that they could do.