Today I was coloring in a bookmark that had the quippy little motivational message, “A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.” — Nelson Mandela
“A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.”
Nelson Mandela
And it made me think: is that really accurate? No, it’s not. Or, more to the point: it’s incomplete. A winner is a dreamer that never gave up and also scored better than all of the other dreamers who also never gave up.
But that doesn’t make the non-winner any less worthy of respect and admiration!
I have always hated the old “joke” about “What do you call the guy who graduates last in med school? Doctor!” Frankly, I don’t care what my doctor’s rank in a classroom setting 30 years ago was; I care that they know enough to be a doctor. If this person was actually too stupid to be a doctor, they would not have graduated.
Likewise, and I think we’re better at recognizing this side of things, an Olympian who doesn’t win a medal is still a goddamn Olympian. The person who finishes last in a marathon still ran a goddamn marathon. That’s far more than any of the armchair haters will ever accomplish.
Being told you have to be the best just to be good enough is a stupid (and, frankly, toxic) attitude to take. Do the thing. Do it well. Don’t worry about your relative ranking compared to others.
(Bonus note: this is also what I told my fellow new parents when my daughter was a 99th percentile chonker. Everyone has to be somewhere on the percentile chart, and every percentile has to be filled. It’s just the pigeonhole principle. It’s not a referendum on the quality of your baby.)
Emilybook 