Have you met excellence?

I was out having dinner with two of my professors and another friend of mine. While talking about various topics like music, art, marriage, history etc. one of my professors asked a very interesting question :- "Have you met excellence?".... He took turns to ask us individually... of course I dint have an answer then.... but the question stuck in my mind and raised a series of questions like "What is excellence?", "How do I formally define excellence?", "Are there any fixed set of parameters that define excellence?", "How will I know if something or someone is excellent?", "How do I differentiate between various levels as excellent/verry verry good/very good/good etc."... or as my friend put it - "I dont have a frame of reference to compare"...

But as I lay in my bed thinking about it, I had some kind of an answer to it... I went to him the next day and told him that my answer to his question would be - "As I grow and meet different people in my life, and encounter different experiences, my definition of excellence changes and there are different people at different points of time whom I find excellent!"...

We then had a very interesting discussion about how time is a very important factor... there always seems to be a right time/timing for everything... It was very nice to listen to his thoughts and ideas and I am always amazed to see how passionately he talks about his own advisor and the kind of ideas his advisor had... He then thanked me for sharing with him my thoughts and we parted - with me reinforcing the notion - "Time plays a very important and key/crucial role in life".