Standout Or Middle Of The Range?

As stated in my article, “How Do You Like The Christmas lights”, I mentioned that after many years of desiring too, I finally achieved an ambition of mine to string up a few Christmas lights in the front yard and around the front of the house.

When I decided to start, only one neighbour in our street had his lights up. By the time I finished the neighbour on the other side had his up as well. Now nearly everyone has! (Not that I put that many up, just that I took my time doing it!) There are only 11 houses in our court and now only three don’t have lights up and ours just add to the scene on either side of us, and rather than looking inferior, look a whole lot better than being the only house in a string of 7 without lights.

As this is our first year in a home of our own, we have no decorations of our own and so are starting from scratch this year. So rather than spend a lot of money on a lot of lights and decorations, I brought only a few but of the cheaper type this year. This year I have gone for quantity over Quality just to get a few lights up and out there. Over the coming years it is my plan to by better and more specific types of lights and decorations. However for this year, just to get the show on the road I have settles for the rather bland and plain not flashing lights, just to get a “Show” out there.

So I have (and for only a few dollars) and even with little artistic flair, it will pass in the dark, particularly at the end of our court. Although Cheap, They are colourful and brighten up the place. Sometimes it pays to always buy the best and start out small, which is my normal philosophy but occasionally like here, one needs to throw their normal philosophy out the window, albeit ever so briefly. So this year at least we have an average display. Walking recently with my wife around our court after dark, we commented that although our lights weren’t the best in the street, they weren’t the worse either.

How about you? Are you sometimes happy to come middle of the range or are you only out for Number one spot and if you can’t get that, won’t even try? Are you even prepared to change your ways and thought patterns occasionally? Or are you so stuck in your old patterns that nothing can change without destroying you? How about considering things from a different perspective even if only once in a while? Or in this case, once a year! Over to you for your thoughts on the matter.