Treasures Next to Trash – My Greatest Accomplishments

What accomplishment are you most proud of? I used to have a very hard time answering that question. After all, I had never achieved anything really amazing, or so I thought. Every time that I won something, I went on to lose the next round, or it seemed too easy to count as a real win. I got into a great college, but the admission rate was high. I won a gold medal at the state tae kwon do championships, but I only had to beat one person and I lost at nationals. I measured my accomplishments by the things I hadn’t done, rather than the things I had.

Today I was clearing out some boxes from a closet. I was looking for old baseball cards that I plan to sell, and I ran across two boxes of momentos. I decided to go through them and get rid of what I didn’t really value. I found my old black belt. Some medals from tae kwon do and debate, and some pictures from high school. I went through the medals, thinking that I wouldn’t keep any. But then I looked more carefully and pulled two out of the group, along with my black belt, to keep. My choice surprised me. They weren’t gold medals, they were participatory.

I chose my junior olympics tae kwon do participation medal and my state finalist speech medal to represent for me my two most important activities when I was a teenager. These were medals that had before only represented failure to me. I got to those places, but then I lost, so I didn’t value the fact that I got there. But looking back now I am most proud of the fact that I got there. That participation medal for the junior olympics represents the two hours a day, six days a week that I trained and the hellish week of camp that I fought through.  I wanted to quit every day that I was at that camp, but I didn’t – that medal, my last in tae kwon do, is a testament to how hard I can work.

The finalist medal for speech represents the happiest times that I had in high school.  I traveled nearly every weekend for either speech and debate or tae kwon do and I made my best friends in the debate program.  Debate and speech not only got me over my fear of public speaking, but helped me to grow up and be independent and a critical thinker.  It may not be a first place medal, but it shows me overcoming my fears and succeeding. 

So far the greatest thing about clearing out my life to just the right amount of things has been finding the things that are really important to me so that I can honor them.  Before I kept treasures shut away in a box next to trash.  Now I have cleared away enough that I can display what is really important to me.  Someday when my kids ask me what that belt and those medals on the wall mean, I can tell them that they represent an important part of my life, and the lesson that I learned that I can work harder than I ever dreamed, and that it’s the journey that should be treasured, not the [intended] destination.