The more I try my hand at writing, the more intrigued I get with words. I look up the meaning of words a lot more now, and I’m often surprised by the shades and nuances I find there. This week I’ve been entranced by two words: quality and quantity.
They came into view when I began to look at what matters most as an evolutionary impulsion. I don’t believe we make major changes in the direction of our life because of random selection. We make life-changing decisions because, somewhere in us, we know that doing so will evolve us. If this were not the case, our children would be just like us.
This is where quality and quantity come into play.
The word quality has several definitions. One meaning describes a distinctive characteristic, attribute or property of something. If you think about the differences in people you know, you could say that it is their intrinsic qualities that make them distinct. When we say someone is hard to get along with, what we really mean is that the face they show the world belies an inner essence (or quality) that is hard to take. It might be a quality of stubbornness or belligerence that sets us off, or maybe it’s the quality of passivity or self-deprecation we can’t tolerate.
This inquiry is most useful if you consider your own qualities. I would say, for instance, that I embody the quality of goodness. That’s not to say that I am always good, but I would say I always return to it. It’s my home base. I choose to be good, and to see good in others. I also see a panorama of qualities I have yet to embody; among them patience, frugality, and abstinence. These yet-to-be-developed qualities (among many others) are my evolutionary edges.
Another definition of the world quality has to do with refinement and excellence, and no matter how undeveloped you are in some areas, there is always the possibility to bring refinement and excellence to who you are and how you conduct yourself in the world. The refinement of stubbornness can be found through, well... not being stubborn. The same is true of excessive belligerence or passivity. The next rung on the evolutionary spiral might just be found in its complementary opposite.
Your personal evolution depends on an ability to refine what is rough or dormant, so that it becomes increasingly elegant and fully expressed. If you look in the mirror and see a quality missing or in need of refinement, and then strive to infuse that quality into every conversation and action, you will evolve — even though your progress may be hard to quantify or evaluate by outside measurements. Why? Because refinement is an inside job, with no end or destination. It develops who you are, which is infinite.
This is not to say that quantity has no place in your personal evolution. If qualityindicates something of value, quantity indicates how that value is applied in the world. For instance, the quantity of your accomplishments is a way to measure how well you’ve applied your evolving qualities. Success, it could be said, is the ability to do it well, time and time again.
The origin of the word quantity comes from the Latin word quantus, which means how much, or how great. This word shares the same root as quantum, which physicists tells us is the minimum unit of any physical entity involved in an interaction.
OK. Sorry. That may be a little bit too much to digest, but it is interesting if you look at your own accomplishments and ask, “How great are they?” and, “How much energy did I expend in bringing them about?”
One way to look at the difference between quality and quantity is to see one as an inward movement (quality) and the other as an outward movement (quantity). The world we live in seems to favor accomplishment, but not if those accomplishments degrade the quality of who you are. The downfall of recent celebrities tells us this much.
Perhaps then, there is value to be found in discovering your greatest qualities, and developing those characteristics through accomplishments that can be quantified and measured in the world.
PRACTICE
Take some time this week to look at what qualities make you who you are. Where are you masterful? And what qualities have yet to be developed? What is your evolutionary edge? Finally, where can you apply those qualities in the goals and projects that are most important to you?
In peace,
Michael