August 29
Success is measured not by the height one has reached, but by the obstacles one had to overcome to get there.
Up from Slavery (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Success is measured not by the height one has reached, but by the obstacles one had to overcome to get there.
What you once learned with effort looks surprisingly small from where you stand today. A phone call for which you might once have written out sentences in advance, you now make in passing. The fear of it is gone, and you can hardly even remember it. In being overcome, the obstacle dissolved.
There is a strange injustice toward yourself in this. Precisely what you have mastered loses its weight. What remains is the result, and it looks ordinary. Others can do that too, you think, and probably without effort.
With others it's the other way round. You see where they stand, but rarely what they had to clear out of the way to get there. Turning up on time or a calmly conducted conversation may have cost someone more than a big step cost you. None of that can be read off.
So when you measure, part of the distance is almost always missing: in your case because you've forgotten it, in others' because you never saw it.
Someday someone may tell you what they used to be afraid of. They mean a phone call. Then the sheet with the written-out sentences comes back to you.
