Our friends drove off this morning after nine days here.
We’ve known them since Rick met the dad of the family at a ball hockey rink, back when my stepson Ryan was seven or eight. Ryan is almost thirty-two now. So that’s the sort of friendship where nobody is on their best behavior, because there’d be no point.
Nine days is long enough to stop tidying. By about day three the good version of the house had given up and the real one took over, and everything improved. Better conversations, better food, more of us actually sitting down.
Which got me thinking about a phrase I grew up hearing.
Sunday best.
It used to mean the outfit you put on for company. The version of yourself you brought out when someone was watching, folded away again by Monday.
But there’s a second reading of it. Your Sunday best is also just the best of what you’ve got. Not the dressed-up version. The good stuff, brought out because it’s worth bringing out.
And I think most of us are running our businesses in the first sense when we’d be much better off in the second.
I’ve done this for years myself.
I’ve written the polished version of a week that was actually a mess. I’ve talked about a system while the real one was three sticky notes and a bad memory. I once spent longer making a spreadsheet look presentable than I spent using it, and nobody was ever going to see that spreadsheet except me.
That’s Sunday best as a costume. It costs a lot and it wins nothing, because the people who stay are the ones who’d rather have the real house.
The other version is different. It’s asking what the genuinely good stuff is, the thing worth putting on the table, and then actually putting it there instead of saving it for a week that never comes.
What are you keeping tidy for company that nobody’s actually coming to inspect?
Build quietly, rebel loudly.It’s your business, your energy and your rules.