Excellence vs Extravagance

The following entry was written by Sister Maria I. from New York:

Ihsan is the idea of "perfecting" things for the sake of Allah without becoming excessive.

1. Allah loves those who pursue excellence, and beautify things for his sake.
2. Allah loves moderation - not doing too little (negligence), and not doing too much (extravagance and excessiveness)

In my opinion, I think the key things we have to differentiate are:

1. Aiming for moderation in our affairs (eating, sleeping, exercising, etc), but NOT aiming for mediocrity in our efforts

In today's day and age, if someone tries to "perfect" something for the sake of Allah - to aim for excellence and beautify it - people might stamp the "OCD" label.

I think it's really important for us to differentiate between excellence and extravagance. I feel that excellence is the aim for beautification, whereas extravagance is transgressing the limits for a particular task. As humans, we can intuitively tell with our gut feeling when we have transgressed the bounds on something. It's just inner intuition.

Because if we just think that "aiming for excellence" = "OCD", then we'll continuously fall down the path of mediocrity.

And of course, we are humans. We fall back down, get back up. Sometimes we're just not able to do the excellence we intended - Qadr'Allah - there is a next time, insha'Allah.