Some people are committed to excellence. We’ve all had teachers, co-workers, and friends who have gone above and beyond the call of their duty to make sure their interests are protected. These people will live on in the memories of those whose lives they affected long after the actual effect has worn away. It seems like you more wind up a person committed to excellence than decide to be one; it just can’t be faked.
However, sometimes a committment to excellence is led astray. Sometime you simply wind up with a perfectionist on your hands who can’t be pleased by anything that you do. Then there is the nitpicker, who is so concerned with the details of a situation that the whole of it is ignored. But, the most dangerous way to stray is that of matyrdom. A martyr is more concerned with holding the world on his or her shoulders than making sure a task gets done, and no matter what happens they’ll take the blame for something. Who would want to just go down for their cause when instead they could don the crown of thorns, strp a cross to their back, and get the Jews to kill them?
The sad thing about martyrs is, they’re not all a Jesus. Some of them are just Apostles who got stoned to death to save them from obscurity. More still barely arrived in sainthood after enduring even worse torture. The rest? They aren’t martyrs. They took the plunge, bit the bullet, went down with their ship, but instead of the Titanic it turned out that they were floating away on the S.S. Minow. And, anyway, even Leo wound up a popsicle, so i think we’d all be better off sticking to the lifeboats.