Be Excellent to Each Other
Bill and Ted are right
Continuing my habit of finding meaning in the most banal of places, we come to those noted masters of philosophy:
This was a silly 1989 movie that was meant to be a fun time at the cinema, but struck a chord with audiences to inspire a couple of fun sequels. If you cannot laugh at the figure of Death forced to play Twister, you need to lighten up.
But the key ethos of the Bill and Ted characters (dumb heroes in the tradition of Scooby and Shaggy or Laurel and Hardy), is that they insist on being “excellent to each other.” Everything they experience is either “excellent” or “bogus,” and that’s more or less a coherent philosophy of life. No, really.
Avoid the bogus, experience the excellent, repeat.
Life doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. You don’t even have to be intelligent to make this work:
Yes, that’s you, dude, and yet not knowing much they managed just fine by striving for excellence, even if their definition of excellence is often not much more lofty than a righteous air guitar solo.
Life really doesn’t have to be that hard. Look out for your friends, strive to live in excellent ways, avoid bogus situations as much as possible. That’s not a difficult way to live.
As Abraham Lincoln says in the first movie:
These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition which was true in my time, just as it's true today. Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Not quite the Gettysburg Address, but it’ll do. We aim low here. But aim for excellence. And listen to Honest Abe and…PARTY ON, DUDES!
Most excellent
Party on dude.