It might only be small, but it’s mine and I’ll celebrate it none the less!

Nearly a week ago Keely Hodgkinson, the 22-year-old British middle-distance runner, stormed to a superb victory in the 800m final at the Paris Olympics (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/05/keely-hodgkinson-storms-800m-gold-team-gb-first-paris-olympics-athletics) A fantastic result after a brilliant silver debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics followed by perhaps more frustrating silvers at the two subsequent World Championships. I know this because the internet told me.

This week has also seen slightly less newsworthy, yet no less important achievements for a few people I know, and many I don’t. From jobs secured; successful Away Days held; promotions received, and qualifications gained to elegant epiphanies, singular symphonies, surprising synchronies, and something about a girl named Tiffany (though that last may have taken the resonant rhyming too far). I know this because social media told me. Persistently.

In a world where celebrated success (and more power to them) may leave our own less titanic triumphs (aye, ‘triumphs’ I say) seem slight, shrivelled, secluded and shrouded in shade, we should still recognise, acknowledge, and own them, for they are ours. Just as we may sometimes feel our own tormenting and tortuous travails pale into insignificance when contrasted with the trials and tribulations of others - to which I will always robustly retort ‘Ah, yes, but we can only deal (or not) with what is in front of us!’, but that’s another post altogether - so too can our own small wins seem reduced to absurdity without a Greek philosopher in sight.

But, just as a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so too a standing ovation begins with a single clap.

I wish to take nothing away from the high-flying high achievers, the grand go-getters, nor even the cynically successful silent assassin whose soaring supremacy sits on the skeletal scraps of their scarified sitting-ducks. No, for they have earned their place on the podium of life for good or ill.

But I do want to encourage all the small win winners, the timorous triumphers, the justified just-abouters to recognise, acknowledge, own and indeed celebrate their successes, even (or perhaps especially) if only to themselves. I do this not so that mediocrity mundanifies the world but because sometimes that’s all we have when we need it most. So we must cherish and sustain them, for even the meanest mammalian masticator deserves a day in the sun.

And size? Well, size is relative (as my wife reassures me repeatedly) and we can only deal with what’s in front of us. But before they know it, maybe even those who feel their achievement is too small to toast will bask in the astronomically adamantin adulation of an audience awash with admiration. ‘And why not?’ As Barry Norman never said.

‘That’s all very’, you may well utter as you strive to shore up your last shred of sanity having got this far, ‘but why such prounounced, yet painful protestation?’ You may well ask, or not; who knows at this point…? Well, because of the mental melee and synaptic shenanigans that preceded my decision to celebrate the fact that our I want to start coaching at work e-learning course has, after much work, gone into Beta testing (and thank you to our testers for enabling that),,,

Sshush, did you hear that?

Was it the softly silenced starting step of that thousand mile safari, or the quietest of pre-adulatory applause? May be. But even if not, I’m going to own it…and perhaps others will too.

[Please note, no rhymes, alliterations, assonances, or hyperboles were harmed (much) in the writing of this post - The Alchemist]