"If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything."
This timeless truth carries more weight today than ever before. We live in an age where excellence is often praised but rarely practiced, where clarity has been traded for convenience, and where standards are not raised but quietly lowered to make life easier. In our classrooms, the phrase "It’s okay" has become a soothing bandage for failure — offered to comfort rather than correct.
"It’s okay." When we lower the bar in the name of kindness, we inadvertently endorse mediocrity. Confusion doesn’t stem from ignorance; it grows in the absence of clear expectations. If excellence is a lighthouse, culture can be the fog. When that fog thickens with excuses, inaction, and inconsistency, students, employees, and citizens lose their sense of direction. We speak of excellence, yet fail to create the conditions — clarity, consistency, and courage, that allow it to flourish. Excellence demands discipline, yet discipline is often the first casualty in cultures that fear accountability. Too often, incomplete work is excused with "At least you tried," or professional stagnation is brushed off with "You’ve done enough." These aren’t random acts of compassion, they are quiet approvals of complacency. When the line between acceptable and exceptional blurs, we confuse not just performance, but purpose. What we excuse today, we normalise tomorrow. Tolerance, misapplied, becomes silent approval. When laziness, dishonesty, or apathy are tolerated in schools, workplaces, or governments, the message is clear: You don’t need to be excellent — just good enough to get by. And what gets rewarded is inevitably repeated. In such an environment, people aren’t inspired to excel; they’re trained to survive. Education offers the clearest example. Some schools promote students regardless of performance, believing failure will harm their self-esteem. But shielding students from discomfort robs them of growth. Excellence cannot be taught without consequence; when there are no stakes, effort withers. Contrast this with Finland, where education thrives on clear expectations, empowered teachers, and daily modelling of high standards. Students are challenged, not coddled. There’s no confusion about what excellence means because it is visible in action. Meanwhile, in systems closer to home, favouritism outranks fairness, appearances outweigh results, and "managing the situation" is mistaken for skill. Mixed messages are everywhere, honesty is preached, yet manipulation is rewarded; meritocracy is claimed, yet connections dictate advancement; individuality is celebrated, yet dissent is punished. It’s like handing someone a compass in a hall of mirrors — direction becomes impossible. As educator Rita Pierson said, "Every child deserves a champion — an adult who will never give up on them." But champions don’t grow in chaos; they need structure, vision, and consistency. Talent without structure is like lightning without a conductor — it dazzles briefly but achieves nothing. If indifference is our answer to underperformance and silence our response to incompetence, we are not teaching excellence — we are enabling decay. What we tolerate, we teach.
Progress is not speed; it’s purpose. If we want a culture of excellence, we must replace mixed messages with clear ones, define what "best" truly means, and align our actions with our words. In the end, society is shaped not by the loudest voices, but by the values most consistently lived.
The author is a Dubai-based columnist, independent journalist, and writing coach
