We tend to see successful people when they have achieved their peak performance and are at last being recognized for it. In sport, we've all seen the classic moment when the Olympic athlete ascends the dais to be awarded a medal and the unspoken promise of future fame, and who knows, maybe even a stint on a box of Wheaties.
The same is true of success in other areas of life. At the peak of your academic career so far, your high school graduation, you walked across a stage, received a rolled up scroll of paper (which was likely a fake just for "show," rather than your actual diploma), shook a hand or two, and descended the stairs to return to your seat in the crowd. Sure, your family and friends waved and cheered, but their hoopla was kept to a minimum, so the next graduate could move in to grab a fleeting moment of glory.
Our culture obsesses over these "summit moments," lifts them up as the end-all-be-all of our existence. We're led to believe that the whole point of life is to get to these moments, as many of them as we can, as soon as we can. Nothing else matters.
As a result, we forget or we ignore all the day-to-day moments that are stitched together in our memories as one long, continuous quilt of the ordinary. And a sweaty, tattered quilt it is, since there's a lot of work going on between summit moments. There is no glamour in the daily grind. No recognition for getting up every day to do the thing that needs to be done over and over again until the work adds up to something worthwhile.
The goal is sexy. A college degree. It sounds good when we announce it to friends and family. The work to achieve this goal is difficult and sometimes repetitive. It's truly fascinating stuff, but wait, what, that's required and really time-consuming? And I'm tired? Naw, that's boring. As hell.
Maybe you've discovered this unfortunate truth. The college experience isn't the endless party you were sold at the movies. And it isn't a free-for-all intellectual orgy of scholarly debate in a hallowed hall, like that dream when you stood up at a podium and said something so completely brilliant that everyone fell silent in amazement.
It's waking up to the subtle smell of your roommate's dirty socks that have crept across the floor to your side of the room, and knowing that you have to greet another day's work despite this unlaundered hostility. Or, it's the bleary-eyed commute from home on the two-lane highway past the cattle that don't have a clue about how hard you are working. It's the seemingly endless paper trail of homework that you are beginning to see stretching out ahead of you until it meets some point on the horizon and disappears in a weary blur.
This is why it's important to appreciate a sunrise or sunset when you can, and make friends, especially with people who have their head down in the books as much as you do. Do an occasional fun thing, be as gentle with yourself as you are able, and then get back to that latest dreaded piece of work that needs to get done.
This is the ugly work of your eventual achievement.
People wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't worth doing.
Your thoughts?
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