Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Small achievements, big victories.



The little things in life are a must. They are the ones that lead us to maturation, that shape our personality traits and, ultimately, dictate us where we go. They are like a ladder that we must use daily – sometimes going up, and sometimes going down.
Nobody is ready to embrace their fate or become an adult without going through the rite of constant small achievements. Destiny is fulfilled only after learning.
The first step is, symbolically, the beginning of the conquest of space. It's the beginning of the walk that will later take us to expand geographies. First the world is just a square around the table which we use to prop our delicate legs, then the course slowly widens, at the hands of parents who lead us through the streets. And finally, that first step, culminates in the passing of life, made of tiny choices constantly woven we go through here and not there, we go further, we stop, we cross this or that place...
The memories accumulate, and as we reach maturity we understand, finally, that to achieve small things it took great efforts, and great battles were fought.
Like the first time you popped a bubble gum, after many failed attempts and many days fighting hard to make something so useless, but that seemed so fascinating as we were not able to do it. And, unexpectedly, the bubble ball came round as the mouth, growing with the breath until it reached its maximum transparency and it popped, giving us a small achievement.
Or when you learnt to whistle. You realize that there is a technique: the whistle fits the lips, and it is the whistle that chooses us. Try it again and again until the day it comes out whole, ready, as if it had always lived within us. And the sound propagates itself, it takes us with it, and this is another small achievement.
That is life: the set of all the small achievements. They are the ones that make the difference, that dictate the course, that wake up rationality, that lead to maturity, that break boundaries and lead to overcoming. It's the first smile, the first word, the first step that make the transition from crib to a stuttering childhood and that lead us into the future.
Sometimes a small gesture transforms itself into an event of even larger proportions so that all future reveals itself in a kind of epiphany – it may be that moment when your eye meets another and you know simply, you simply know, that the future is all there.
The future is the place where it is believed that dreams, projects and desires inhabit. Everything that you cannot accomplish today, gets filed away in the future, gets thrown up ahead and we hope that one day the twists of life and our efforts will get us there. From the moment we understand what the future means we start to pursuit it, like cats trying to catch their own tails.
But the future is made of today's decisions, today’s moments and small achievements. The future is like us: it isn’t born ready; it doesn’t come out with a bang, suddenly, like the cry of a newborn. It is slow, it grows quietly, and it feeds on the successes and mistakes. You have to sweat and cry, laugh and fool around, skin your knees in childhood, make soap bubbles, have a first love, and make sand castles before you build a real house.
The future emerges of small achievements, and reveals itself in big victories.

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