I believe in the saying, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
This saying is very true because one can put forth his best effort and it can pay off later. If one gives up right at the end and doesn’t quite finish what he started, then it won’t amount to anything. Being close to anything (besides horseshoes and hand grenades) is not complete, it is close. So no matter how hard one tries, how much time one puts into something, all the practice in the world will not help one at all if one just is close.
I have learned this through a game called tennis. Whenever I would hit the ball over the net it had to land in the court. If I missed, it was out and I lost the point. It didn’t matter how close I was, because it was still out. I could miss the shot by a mile or by an inch and either way I would lose the point. So I have realized from this little experience that close really doesn’t matter in tennis, one has to make it in.
I do believe that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Imagine if everyone just came close and didn’t put in the extra effort to finish what they started. These new lazy people would be in our government, our doctors, even our teachers. People would just stop caring and the world would fall into a catastrophic decline from which it would never recover. Before long all our resources would be depleted. No one would work for anything else and then we would all die a terrible death. Now do you want that to happen?