Why Do You Need to Be Great at This?

One time in grad school, I gave a ride to a Korean Buddhist monk. He was older than me, soft-spoken but perceptive, and asked if I planned to become a professor. I told him no. I had considered it. At the time, I was fascinated by Central Asian Buddhism, a field that demanded fluency in Chinese, Tibetan, and Uyghur. And because nearly all the scholars working in that space were Japanese, it also meant mastering my academic nemesis: Nihongo.

My fascination was sincere, but my aptitude for languages lagged behind my curiosity. In hindsight, I suspect I was drawn to the field because the path was so impossibly difficult. There’s a kind of romance in chasing something you know you’ll never catch. I told him, “No. I’m not great at languages, and if I were to be a professor, I’d want to be a great one, not just another mediocre academic.”

He listened, paused, and then, in broken English, asked me a question that pierced straight through my carefully assembled logic:

“Why do you need to be great at this?”

My brain sputtered.

There are parts of ourselves we knowingly try to improve—our weaknesses, our habits, our interpersonal skills. But then there are the unexamined convictions buried in our operating system, deep beliefs that we mistake for truths. For me, the need to be great at something wasn’t just a goal. It was a foundational belief, an assumed necessity. Even though I was only 23 and demonstrably not great at anything, this belief shaped how I saw my potential and self-worth.

The monk's question was a kind of koan—a riddle not meant to be answered directly, but to be lived with, puzzled over, and slowly absorbed. “Why do you need to be great at this?” wasn’t just a passing curiosity. It was a gift, one that would take decades to unpack.

At first, it hit me like a challenge. But over time, I realized it wasn’t a test—it was an invitation to freedom. The belief that I had to be great was, in fact, a source of suffering. It was preventing me from engaging with the things I loved unless I could already excel at them. What if my curiosity and my modest talents, applied with diligence, were enough? What if good could be good enough?

That koan stayed with me.

I eventually finished my graduate work. My honors thesis included a zany chapter analyzing Buddhist enlightenment theories through the lens of Ries and Trout’s Immutable Laws of Marketing. It was filler, really—more playful than academic—but it slipped through. Turns out Buddhist studies professors have a surprisingly sharp sense of humor.

One of those "immutable laws" said that if you can’t be number one in a category, create a smaller niche where you can be. If you can’t be the top shoemaker, be the best running shoemaker. If you can’t be the best car company, be the best sports car company. Find a segment you can own. Even if that means being “the best dad on the block,” you’ve staked out your ground.

This marketing maxim harmonized with the monk’s question. It gave me a conceptual framework to accept the idea of not needing to be great in the abstract. I didn’t need to dominate the whole mountain—just find a trail I could enjoy climbing.

Over the years, I’ve continued to deconstruct this need for greatness. I grew up in a supportive household. My siblings were gifted, driven, successful. My parents’ story was one of bootstrapping from hardship to comfort. The idea of being “great” was never forced on me, but it was implied. It hovered in the background like a destiny waiting to be fulfilled. And it always felt expected.

But what about happiness?

As I tell my son: My job is to raise you so you're moral and self-supporting. Happiness is your job. It’s not guaranteed, and I can’t tell you how to get there. I can only point out the connection: moral behavior and self-reliance often lead to conditions where happiness can arise. Being great? That’s incidental. It may show up as a byproduct of living well, or not at all. Either is fine.

If greatness arrives, wonderful. If not, also fine. Happiness, too, is impermanent—welcome it when it visits, but don’t expect it to stay. And whatever it is, I can’t give it to my son, and it’s not the end goal of a spiritual path.

“Why do you need to be great at this?” remains my koan. I still nibble at the edges, still catch myself wrestling with that impulse. I enjoy defining greatness in others. But needing to be great? I’ve mostly let that go. It only took about 35 years of quiet reflection and stubborn internal debate.

These days, I carry a new koan:

“Does this bring me freedom?”

That’s the better question now. It’s what I use to guide decisions, big and small. One of my favorite corollaries is: “Debt is the promise of future work.” It’s a reminder that every obligation takes a piece of freedom with it, and that freedom—not greatness—may be the better compass.