Accomplishments

I hesitate to respond because, well, I don't know.  Tough subject I guess.  It's tough because, like many things, what I believe in my head and what I'm able to actually live out in real life doesn't always match up.

Any time we start listing accomplishments, I feel like we're doing it so that we can compare, and I just don't like it.  We applaud when we read or hear stories about people being comfortable with themselves regardless of what people think, and yet we (yes, I'm including myself) spend our days comparing.  We can't help it.  We start teaching kids to compare themselves to others from the day that they're born.

"Just had his one-month follow-up appointment.  He's in the 95 percentile for weight, and 75% for length."

"She's only in first grade, but she's reading at a third grade level."

And it never ends.

My mental health depends on me believing that I am who God says that I am.  It's fact.  So I need to recognize when others contradict that truth and ignore it.  Comparison to others = feeling like a failure.

So accomplishment to me is hardly worth discussing.  Not that you guys would, but maybe my accomplishments don't mean a hill of beans to you.  And perhaps I'm not emotionally strong enough to handle the possibility of someone telling me that what I believe is an accomplishment isn't really an accomplishment at all.  Is a majority vote required by the general populace in order for it to be an accomplishment?

I apologize in advance because this has sparked a thought process for me that drives to what I believe is a core issue in the world these days, and that is being comfortable with yourself.

Yep, that's cliche.  But I believe it's the most powerful and transformational thinking for about any human being.  I guess I feel like so many people spend so much time and energy doing stuff so that they can tell someone else that they did it, because it will convey an image that they hope to portray.  They didn't do it because they wanted to, but because they think someone else would want them to.  Or they don't do something that they want to do, because they are afraid what someone will think if they do.

What a miserable life.

I'm all over the damn place.

What were we talking about?  Oh yeah, accomplishments.  Ed, relational accomplishments are absolutely the best accomplishments.  I wholeheartedly agree.  You don't generally hear eulogies the include the "stuff" that people did, but rather about what kind of person they were: loyal, kind, generous, loving, faithful, friendly, caring, etc.  Those are relational.  Certainly traits that can be on display at work, but they aren't work related.  They can be displayed in any relational context: parent to child, child to parent, friendships, marriages, cousins, neighbors, co-workers, teacher to student, authority figures, etc.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if we all had relational bucket lists - if our bucket lists included things that express our friendliness, our love, our loyalty, and our care.  Even just a little.  Not for the sake of comparing to someone else's list, but even if we strive to do it just a little, I think we would all benefit.

[Raises hand to express the international "I'm sorry" gesture, steps off the soap box, and shrinks away from the blog]