Maybe success is calling your mum.
Maybe it’s reading an article about sobriety even though it scares you to death.
Maybe success is leaving.
Or staying a bit longer because it’s their birthday and it will mean more to them than your being in bed before midnight will to you.
Maybe we’re all quietly aware that the key to success is not hard work.
It’s not dieting or a better college or volunteering taking up running five times a week.
Maybe it’s being capable of celebrating.
How many things have you overcome to be sitting and reading this right now? You’re awake, or being read to as you lay half-sleeping in bed. You’ve connected to the internet, or screenshot this for later. You’ve let your curiosity lead you here. You’ve overcome the barriers of wakefulness, isolation and ignorance. Just by opening this Substack. That’s cause for celebration, don’t you think? And the problem is, most of us don’t.
We have breakthroughs every day of our lives. Most often, they don’t feel big. They’re not the goals we set for ourselves – some days, they will be. But most days, midweek and mid- life crises, we’re overcoming on an impressively constant basis. Breakthroughs imply the existence of barriers, which we can often only see and acknowledge once they’re behind us. But every moment of the day, we make choices that see us hurdling over roadblocks. We acknowledge it’s a race – ‘the rat race’, the corporate ladder, the grind. So, why don’t we ever stop to give ourselves the credit?
At the risk of sounding like my virtual running coach (I love you, Coach Bennett), knowing how far you’ve come relies on us seeing how far we’ve come. Being able to look back and count the miles, and the moments. The phrase ‘take it in your stride’ is one of the misguided sentences in our cultural vocabulary, and implies a sense of glorified urgency that only ever leads to burnout and cutting corners. Stop at the podiums. If that’s the shower, perfect. If it’s just inside the train doors as they close behind you, yes!
Celebrate yourself for making a coffee at home instead of buying one today, or resting when you had workout plans, or being late to work because you stopped to give your partner a proper kiss goodbye.
Because how can we properly see each other’s successes if we don’t rehearse it with ourselves? How do we know how to wrench open our hearts and our wallets to help others when things fail, when everything does? We can only offer the kindness we know.
There is no shame in knowing how far you’ve come - and not just in last 10 years, or 20, but since this morning, when you were deciding for or against the day. Celebrate getting up. Buy yourself a Snickers for letting that guy into traffic. For getting those flowers to let someone know they’re important, and adding the balloon on a stick to make them laugh. For taking the train because it helps, even though you can’t see it. Quitting vaping because you can, and it doesn’t.
Avoid the sucking needle social media, and the temptation of sparring in the comments. These are the real weapons of mass destruction – when we start to turn. Against each other, to our vices and off the comments. Genuine care is not a finite resource, it’s a practice. Care is a muscle that we can strengthen through celebration, acknowledgment and reflection. And too many of us are in danger of letting it waste away. We’re quick to spit venom online, and let misunderstanding rise in our throats and command our fists. Our lack of celebration and self-satisfaction is a vaccum that media is quick to stuff with fear.
Too many of us hate our birthdays, or run from applause, despite how hard we worked to get there. Knowing your strength is not weak or selfish. It’s just another strength. So, get in the gym and start caring. There’s no spandex here, you don’t have to move, in fact it’s better if you don’t, and cake is encouraged.
First exercise: call your mum.
Celebrate walking to the supermarket.
Buy yourself a little treat, because it’s never ‘for nothing’.
With all of our matter, and every bundle of cells still living, dreaming and aiming in the middle of nowhere, we can never be nothing again.
Even if we tried.
Love,
TN
This is brilliant and definitely what I needed in my inbox today.