Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)

This afternoon, what started out as some outside playing time, turned into the great deforestation project of 2010. While the boys and I were tossing the football around, Grandpa decided to climb up on top of their fifth-wheel camper and clear off some things. Well, that reminded me of a few low-hanging tree branches I had wanted to cut down. One thing led to another and before we knew it, all five of us were deep into an hour or two of some pretty intense yard work!

First, I cut down the branches I wanted to bring down. The boys thought that was fun and helped remove the limbs I brought down. I spied a few more that I wanted to cut, so I did that. My dad suggested a few more that could use trimming… and then while our neighbor was outside with us, I saw/remembered a dead tree that needed to be cut down with a chainsaw. It just so happens our neighbor has a chainsaw! 🙂 (And it just so happens my Dad is quite experienced with such implements, having his own tree cutting business a few decades ago.)

So… it was on.

We even got the neighbor on the other side of our property involved. It was a deforestation party! We brought that tree down, and a couple other fairly large branches that were hanging over the house next to our property (from a tree on our property). It was definitely a good bit of work, but quite fun.

I was pretty impressed that all three of the oldest kids were not just being helpful, but even happy to be helping, enjoying themselves. Once the cutting was done the yard was pretty full of felled limbs, branches, twigs, walnuts, leaves, and other clutter. There was a good deal more work to do.

I spotted a bunch of smaller branches strewn across our driveway that had fallen from the branches being dragged to the big pile, and decided to offer some encouragement to the helpful young workers.

“Now be sure to get all of these smaller branches, too guys. It’s a bit more work, but let’s make sure we do it. Let’s make sure we do a great job, not just an ‘OK’ job.”

As I said it I thought, Hey… that’s what I always try to say to them, in many more words! I remember my Dad saying, “Do it right the first time,” and so I have repeated that a time or two. Or ten. Or fifty. But really the heart of what I’m wanting to say is to just always do your best. Never cut corners. Never settle for less.

Do a great job, not just an ‘OK’ job.

I don’t think that’s common. At least, not in our current American culture. Do you? Do you see people around you doing everything with excellence. Trying to do their job (or really, anything they do) with greatness, not just the minimum effort and results? Perhaps it’s our educational system that passes “satisfactory” as the standard, or just a natural cycle of a society. Not sure, but I am hoping that such an attitude toward anything we undertake will be how we Campbells are known.

Today that worked pretty well. 🙂

What things are part of your family identity? We have a few others. And there are some that we are still working on passing along/training into our kids. It will be interesting to see what our efforts—and maybe even more so, the unintentional stuff we are passing along—looks like in our kids and their families down the road. Till then we’ll keep reaching for the great, not just the OK.