Q is for Quality

*If you're new to the alphabet series, start here.**

If you haven't gathered by now, sweet girl, life is hard. It takes a lot, a LOT, of energy. You will constantly compare yourself to others you see around you, constantly second guess yourself and what you are doing. And the more you look around, the more you compare, the more you might think that I've lied to you. That life doesn't actually require a lot of energy. Or effort. That it's not really all that hard. You'll see people left and right getting by by doing less. And you, weary from your effort, will look at them and long for their passivity. You'll want the rest they appear to enjoy all the time. You'll wonder why you always try so hard, why you bust your butt when you, apparently, don't have to.

And you'd be right to wonder. You don't have to bust your butt in life. You don't have to get up early, pack your day full of activity, strive to do more, to do better, than those around you. You don't have to collapse into bed, weary and sore and spent. There are people--lots of people--who don't. And they wake up every day, just like the rest of us. They breathe in and out. They eat. They laugh. They sleep. They never exert the kind of effort I'm talking about. They never set themselves up for failure because they never reach for anything outside of their grasp. They just . . . get by. They just exist.

And you could do this, too. But I hope you won't.

There's more out there.You deserve more. You deserve a different, a better, experience.

Life is short and moments are fleeting. It's this very brevity, this finite nature of our time here that gives life quality. Meaning. It's the laws of economics, of supply and demand, taken to it's biggest stage. Imagine if you had a money tree growing in your yard--an unlimited supply of money, all you could ever want. Would you ever think twice about buying a new television or eating an expensive dinner or getting a stain on a new shirt? Of course not. But what if you only had $100? Or $50? Or $10? And once you spent that, it was all gone. Would you be so free, so careless? You would weigh your decisions much more carefully, wouldn't you?

So it is with life. If you lived forever, it wouldn't really matter what you did with your time. You'd always have more. But you won't live forever. Life is finite. Everything that lives, eventually, dies. So time becomes invaluable. Precious. And how you choose to spend the time you have becomes immeasurably important.

I'm not here to tell you what to do with that time. I don't know what your dreams are, what your dreams will become. You might be a cook or a philanthropist or an athlete or a teacher or a writer or an executive or a stylist. That's the fun part. That's the part that you get to pick.

But whatever it is that you decide to do with your time, do it well. Be a bad ass at it.

Because life is too short to half-ass it.

So go for it, girly. Go for better than everyone else. Go for the extra credit, the A+ on the test that everyone else bombs, the race that is longer than other people would ever consider, the experiences that are more, that are richer, that are fuller. The point is not to pack your life 'til it's bursting at the seams with so many activities that you have no choice but to half-ass them all. The point is to do whatever it is that you do with quality.

Even when you're busy. Because if you don't have time to do it right the first time, how are you ever going to have time to do it again? And the fact of the matter is, it's when you are busiest that the most moments slip by you, to be gone forever without you taking much notice of them at all. Never use "busy" as an excuse. Use it as a motivation to try harder.

Even when you're tired and just want to quit. Because looking back at the road you just fought up, at the view from the top of the hill, is the most incredible, fulfilling, exciting, energizing feeling. The ability to look at what you've accomplished and feel proud of yourself is the stuff that makes you okay with dying when the day comes, because you know, in your heart of hearts, that you gave everything you had to life and you got everything it had to offer in return.

Even when you may not care. Because chances are, if it's a task set before you, there is some value in it. There is something in it for you. Someone cares about it. And at the very least, the constant practice of putting quality into everything that you do will only strengthen your abilities, will only reinforce the behavior so that it becomes second nature, so that next time, you don't actually have to try so hard to convince yourself to do it. Eventually, quality will touch the edge of everything you touch.

So you see, life becomes not so much about what you do with it but how you do with it. There is so much out there for you. So much you can get. But it takes effort, it takes attention quality, to get it.

So turn off your autopilot and get uncomfortable. Get tired. Challenge yourself. Give all of yourself to a task.

And revel in the raw act of living.