At times, when we see the achievements that others have made, we might feel insignificant in comparison. We view them, people who are our friends, family, foe, or strangers with admiration, respect, envy, and even a little fear. Perhaps at times, we feel completely out of their league. “I’m just a small fry, my achievements are nothing in comparison,” we might think. It is easy to get disgruntled when everyone just seem to be eons ahead of you, and yet you continue to lag behind, try hard as you might. It is easy to feel angry, and perhaps resigned, when the people around us who are supposed to love and accept us unconditionally seem to be constantly putting us down with every “why can’t you be like them?” uttered.
Yes. Perhaps we aren’t all scholarship holders or medallion winners. Maybe our cabinets back home aren’t decorated with show ribbons and accolades. Maybe we don’t have a tremendously big problem choosing what to include in our CVs. But you know what? I think, that’s okay. Be proud of every little milestone you’ve hit, every achievement you’ve made no matter how big or how small. You have survived your first year of life after all, where mortality risks are at its greatest! Even if no one is sharing that moment or pride with you, you’ve done good in your circumstances and to your abilities. Be obnoxiously proud of that and give yourself a clap on the back. You deserve it.
We are a patchwork amalgamation of who we were to become who we are. And every day we make choices that butterfly effects its way through time and action. You, insignificantly small under the infinite stars, set in motion a chain of actions and decisions that would send you, the bright hurtling comet within your own life’s solar system into the lives of others and irrevocably affect them in big ways and small.
Be a little kinder, smile a little brighter. These are little things that are getting incredibly harder to achieve these days. If you can inspire a positive change in just one person’s life, even if it is that of your own, by gosh, you truly have succeeded.
And that’s something a recognised accolade can never acknowledge. And we don’t need one for that, too.
