You Did Your Best

When you try your heart out and things still don’t have a happy ending, there’s always some well-meaning soul who says, “You did your best.”

They believe it, and probably if you asked a dozen people familiar with the situation, they would agree. So why is it so hard for us to believe? Why can’t we give ourselves the grace to acknowledge the fact that we really did do our best?

And Sometimes it Doesn’t Work Out

A personal example. We had a few feral cats around our house and I was working on befriending them so I could get them vaccinated, and neutered or spayed. I was making progress with a young orange tomcat I named Maydo (long story about the name). I hadn’t petted him yet, but I was able to be within just a few inches, and he was no longer running away the minute he saw me.

Then one day I went outside and he was sitting in a peculiar position. When he got up, one hind leg was dangling from the hock down. I knew it was fractured, and from what I could tell from a distance, it was a compound fracture – a very major injury. Because I’d been feeding him regularly, it wasn’t hard to get him into a live trap. We gave him food and water and a litter pan and I started calling all of the local veterinarians. No one had room on their schedule for him. Our local emergency vet clinic doesn’t open till 5 PM, so once I got home from work, I loaded him up and drove him to the clinic. I was pretty sure that the injury would require amputation of the leg, but I know several 3-legged cats who manage surprisingly well. My diagnosis was correct – compound fracture requiring amputation… to the tune of $1800. I didn’t have $1800. I ended up having to make the heartbreaking decision to have him euthanized. I heard from several people, “But you did your best”, “If you hadn’t been taking care of him already, he would have suffered much more”. “He’s better off”. To me, none of that mattered. I had failed him.

After a few days of heartbreaking guilt and tears and self-recriminations about not having $1800 to save Maydo, I accepted that I had, in fact, done my best. I vowed then and there never to be in that position again – needing to have an animal euthanized simply because I couldn’t afford life-saving medical treatment, but I was able to give myself the grace to understand that, under the circumstances at the time, I had done my best.

Lessons Learned

Awful as the situation was, I learned a few important lessons from Maydo.

1. The outcome doesn’t necessarily reflect the effort. You can work your tail off, try your hardest, do your best, and sometimes the desired outcome just doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean you didn’t do your best.

2. You become a better person by doing your best. Working toward a goal, putting in the blood, sweat, and tears can make you more resiliant, and help you develop a sense of accomplishment in your actions and strength of character, even if everything didn’t turn out the way you hoped.

3. Those situations can be a wakeup call.  I realized that my job doesn’t provide the the level of financial security I’d like, so I’ve become more serious about building my business. Will I be presented with another situation where I don’t have the resources to reach my desired outcome? Probably, but in the meantime, I’m doing my best to become more financially secure by growing my  business. I’m learning new skills and becoming more disciplined about scheduling time to write articles, courses, and workbooks. And I feel like I’m in a better place because of that.

Doing our best doesn’t guarantee “success”, but it should guarantee peace.