Philosophy: Reflections on Parmenides' Consistency

CONSISTENCY

            Parmenides made the first breakthrough in philosophy. He contradicted Heraclitus’ constant Change with his constant Constant.  Constant means something permanent, unchanging. And thus, from the word constant we derived the word consistency. Parmenides’ metaphysics is like a mirror that makes my heart bound and reflect.

            One of the most distinguished icon in the diocese of Legaspi was the Bicol bible scholar Monsignor Noe de los Santos. He is called the reference of the diocese. He devoted his entire life in studying and translating the bible into Bikol language. He could study the whole night up until 3 o’clock in the morning. This brilliant scholar was assigned in our seminary as the Dean of Studies. He introduced to us the importance of language. He knows ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, sometimes he speaks Latin and his Bikol is an old (suanoy) Bikol. As a seminarian, I really admire his eloquence and passion for learning. He was my idol since then. He is a model of excellence and consistency. One time, one of my classmate ask him, “How do you define excellence?” Then Monsignor said in reply, “Excellence means simply to excel, and to excel means to go beyond average.”

Going beyond average is easier said than done. I’ve realized that some of the people who excel continue to excel but some doesn’t maintained or have failed. Some are consistent in excellence and some are simply inconsistent. Sometimes I excel, but most of the time I fail. Whenever I achieve some sort of excellence, I wish to stay forever in that echelon of success. But staying to be always excellent is very hard nut to crack. It’s very hard to maintain. I have to exert a 110 percent effort for excellence requires an excellent effort too. I’ve realized that aiming to be always excellent is impossible but through consistency, it is not just possible but probable. Being excellent means being consistent.

Being consistent means you do not settle for average. I’ve realized that in whatever task we are doing, we should make it a constant goal to perform it again better than we’ve ever done it before. Then we should repeat the same excellent performance again and again, until we reach the excellence that reflects our best. Unfortunately, sometimes we adopt a personal policy of doing just enough to get by. We adopt a myopic policy or a minimalistic mentality (ok na yan). As a student, sometimes, we think that the highest goal of our studies is graduation or diploma rather than the knowledge that makes us excellent. In real life, there is a wide gap between a person with a degree and the one who can perform at a high level of distinction.

The opposite of consistency is mediocrity. Mediocrity is the cancer of the soul. Every time we practice mediocrity, we find our personality a mirror of it---dull and boring. My personal question to counter mediocrity and a life of dullness is: How can the door to personal excellence be opened? My answer is find the key. And the key to excellence is a life of consistency!