Frankly Put: My Greatest Achievement
Picture this; you are seated in a circle and a baton is being passed around. It goes around and everyone is quick to pass it along for a reason you only meet when it lands in your lap. A question is attached that asks, “What is your greatest achievement?”
Now the quick response to this, I have found, is often to run to tangible accolades and we do find that in the things we do. The list goes on; where we work, awards we have received, schools we have been to and generally the things that bring us external validation. However, there are times when people take great pride in human resource and exclaim, “I am a father/mother to so and so.” I normally find those moments so wholesome and endearing.
From where I am standing, I can see why that may be and if you asked me I would probably do the same. Not the “father” thing because I don’t have any children… As far as I know. Lately, it has been something that I have been ruminating on for a minute because I have found myself in many a position where one is encouraged to sell themselves in the name of networking and of course that entails peacocking your value to someone.
I often find it very belittling to have to suck up to someone in the name of networking and unfortunately, it is the route one has to use to progress anywhere in this world. Sometimes I wonder, are we destined to just keep chasing achievements until we are directly related to these achievements? It just seems that respect is not accorded to us unless we are the very representation of “achievement”. Will we not mean something if not by our titles and the things that we do? We are because we do… or we do because we are, the saying goes.
Every passing birthday and New Year I like to ask myself the question just to see how I perceive it and if I have changed in my line of thinking and honestly, yeah, there have been changes here and there. For example, last year, I was toying with the idea of my greatest achievement being opening up my heart after spending so long in the “healing era”. The security in being able to give the commitment without fearing that nothing will be left once it breaks. I’m still arguing whether that is an achievement or a natural progression of life. On the path of relearning what an achievement means to me.
I don’t think that the greatest achievement has to be something that was one large leap into the deep end. It could be a series of smaller steps that begin a chain reaction into something that feels like a great feat. It is not Sysisphus and the large boulder. It is not Atlas with the world on his shoulders. It is more like a toddler learning how to crawl. It is a recovering paraplegic, refinding their feet and learning to walk again. It is getting up every morning and getting out of bed on time.
What do you do in a place where your achievements mean nothing? Say for example; you were once top of your class and that soon became your identity but here is the thing, that opened doors for you into rooms where everyone else was also the top of their class, then what? If everyone is special then no one is, becomes the energy in that room. What then do you have that defines you? Especially since that aspect is something that you derived external validation for but now you are just an everyday Joe.
I recognize in this thinking that I am pandering to the “participatory trophy” mentality. I actually don’t think that it is something I would encourage. The recognition is healthy but it doesn’t do much except in some cases, water down the actual achievement. Imagine, there is a mountain and everyone who summits the mountain gets a medal. Now in this case you have worked hard at climbing the mountain and gotten your medal only to find that the people who sat at the foot of the mountain got the same medal. How does that picture make you feel?
It is interesting the way the mind works because how I spiral into these debates in my mind is fascinating. That being the case… I think I can define what I think my greatest achievement is this time around. I would say that my greatest achievement is in just being what I think is authentic to me. To be human for once. Entertain the fact that I am not perfect, I do not live in any delusions and I am capable of mistakes and the grace to make them.
It may not seem like much of an achievement but here we are working on defining that for ourselves outside external validation. I think it has taken me quite some time to sit securely in this mental space of defining my own validation. It still gets shaken from time to time but I am at the point where I no longer see it as such a great inconvenience more so as an opportunity to figure out just how deep I am in this space I think I am in. Authenticity is a hard item of clothing to wear because it doesn’t always follow the fashion trends.
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor and I hope for my own sake I am learning to be a better sailor every time the waves push me this way and that. To be kind, even when it seems like the world is taking me fi idiot. To offer love and compassion, where it seems like there is none in return. To be consistent, when the odds seem to favour inconsistencies. To be open, when the situation is designed to make me want to just shut the door and build my walls up again. I'm allowing myself to be curious enough to want to see what that looks like.
I guess I could go off on a limb to say I think that at this point in life, my greatest achievement is me… to put it Frankly.
