One Way Or Another

"Thought for the Day" on Radio 4 this morning was about excelling at something. Apparently to excel you need to dedicate 10000 hours to your sport, music or whatever. A lot of your life. And I was thinking it is strange, society wants us to try and excel, excelling is seen as a virtue, and yet society also expects us to undersand that life is about family. These two paradigms are diametrically opposed to one another. Those who excel often later talk about how much they sacrificed. And a lot of what they sacrificed was those around them. They become heroes in society and at the same time ignore all those things that can give them personal value.