The great eclipse of 2024 has come and gone. Several families from my son's school even took their kids out of school for several days to jaunt off to various locations along the Path of Totality to experience the 100 percent coverage of the sun by the moon. We did something similar but wimped out and went to my parents' house in northern New Jersey to see the eclipse at a measly 99 percent coverage. And became one of the despised people decried by the eclipse purists for missing the opportunity of a lifetime by a mere couple of hundred miles.

Truthfully, the purists do have a point. There is a huge difference between 100 percent vs. 99 percent coverage. The sun is so bright that even 1 percent is "still 10,000 times brighter than the full moon," according to Angela Speck, a professor of astronomy at the University of Missouri and co-chairwoman of a national eclipse task force for the American Astronomical Society. When we went out and witnessed 99 percent coverage through the special glasses, the eclipse was awe-inspiring and truly unique. The slow encroachment of the moon over the surface of the sun was as tension-filled and emotionally taut as the best action movie. When only a tiny sliver remained of the sun, it was as if the sun and the moon had reversed their roles; the sun became the crescent light source in the sky.

However, the day was still bright, albeit with a hazy, subdued hue. Those who were in the Path of Totality, experienced the incredible and sudden casting of the darkness over the day for those few moments. Lucky few even caught the slivers of the sun's corona streaming around the darkness that was the moon totally blocking the sun. In that sense, 99 percent coverage certainly wasn't 100 percent totality. The experience was qualitatively different. The closest analogy that I can think of would be watching an IMAX movie in the theaters with the sound coming through a pair of Bluetooth speakers next to your seat. The immersible nature of the 100 percent experience just isn't there at 99 percent.

But does that mean that the 99 percent was any less unique to us? It was still a once-in-a-lifetime event that I got to enjoy with my wife, son and elderly parents, even if it was in the middle of an apartment parking lot. I might not have bragging rights for having borne witness to the 100 percent, but the memory of that experience will surely live on and impart wistful but positive recollections for years to come. Isn't that what matters?

Not according to pretty much everyone. Every newspaper article and social media post blasted that it's all or nothing. There can only be one winner. Even second place is a loser. It's pretty harsh, but maybe it's something that's expected in today's performance-oriented world whereby we have to be the best at everything we do. We have to get all A's in school. We have to get 1600s in the SATs. We have to get into Harvard. We have to cross first at the track meet. We have to be the No. 1 draft pick. We even have to perform well in bed. We worship high performance with a religious fervor. And, like a religion, it's faith-based. We don't question its internal logic or natural consequences of performance as the primary driver of our civilization. It has gotten so bad that eclipse watching has become performance-based. It's 100 percent or nothing, indeed.

Korea would actually find this faith tradition very familiar, perhaps even comforting. After all, it is the overriding secular religion of the country: performance at any cost. This is a country that owns the adage that says even a tiger has to do its best when hunting a mere rabbit. While this saying is meant to emphasize the importance of doing the small things right, it also conveys the criticality of always trying your best in everything. In fact, we are conditioned to feel guilty for not trying to be No. 1.

Unfortunately, being No. 1 means that everything is necessarily a competition. You can't be No. 1 unless there is a No. 2, 3, etc. No wonder we are so tired all the time. No wonder we are so wary of one another all the time. Indeed, no wonder we are so lonely all the time. How can you truly open up and share when you are competing every moment of the day with everyone else? We breathe in anxiety and breathe out isolation.

Until we remember that our 99 percent eclipse viewing experience was still meaningful to me and my family. It was extraordinarily special because we shared the experience together. Sharing is what allowed me to see through the prison bars of the mental cage that I have constructed around myself driving me to always perform. Sharing gave me that pause I needed to just enjoy the moment without having to compete to experience the best enjoyment. It might not have been the totality, but it was nevertheless fulfilling.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect The Korea Times' editorial stance.