What Ever Happened to Good Enough?

To be the best no matter what you're doing is such an American, specifically Irish-Polish load of malarkey. It's why 45 year-old men drop dead of heart attacks on the trading room floor, why kids in middle school are seeing shrinks, and why everyone else in the world thinks we're bonkers. Try reprogramming that little chip though. I dare you. It's incredibly hard not to revert back to the rat race, panicking over whether or not you're doing better than the next guy. What ever happened to good enough? Why doesn't that hold water anymore? Remember when you had a babysitter, and she spent most of the night talking on the phone to her boyfriend, never really paying any attention to you, and how that was completely OK? Nowadays the babysitters are getting pre-screened and interviewed harsher than if they were applying for Homeland Security. We all seemed to have survived the Good Enough Period in our lives, right? Why the recent push for perfection, the anxiety-addled striving to be better than everyone else, to have all the advantages and head starts? After a while, the mediocre kids and grown-ups will start looking kind of cool, like they have the answers to everything in life. Certainly, to be sure, they will have lower blood pressure.