Small Victories

Hadn’t thought about it much until this morning when noting my own small victory that in itself seemed nearly insignificant until I compared it to what had become a too frequent occurrence to ignore.

We all have these inconspicuous ‘small victories’ daily but we are usually too focused on the day’s larger issues and requirements that we push those lesser daily challenges aside as ‘no big deal’ and plow forward to the next necessary task at hand.

But for one short moment maybe we should stop and acknowledge that ‘small victories’ are what keeps us going when the world at times seems too much for us to carry by ourselves.

Small victories are the decent night’s sleep for the frequent insomniac, or the fruitfully full inhalation of life-giving oxygen for the asthmatic or chronic lung congestion patient, or a moment’s appreciation by the semi-depressed person for the lilting robin’s song at daybreak that gives a fleeting sense of joy if allowed.

Small victories are happily witnessing the successful struggles of your physically or mentally challenged child mastering the smallest task like walking a few steps or eating a few bites, or even offering you a reciprocal smile when you wonder if even that is too much to hope for from them.

Small victories are the parent with dementia suddenly coming out of the perpetual mental fog and momentarily recognizing who you are and what you meant to them both then and now.

Small victories by their very presence are the optimist’s evidence that God, in whatever form, does exist, and the pessimist’s new doubt in their long-standing theory that every bad turn of events is preordained to happen to them.

Small victories, despite their ephemeral nature, keep us going when the going gets really tough and we are so darn tired of the near constant turmoil everywhere we look.

But the thing is, you really have to watch for them—those small victories—because without acknowledging all the usual minor life challenges in and of themselves, you might completely miss suddenly being victorious over them.

I think this ‘acknowledgement’ of successfully navigating LIFE’s daily gauntlet is the precursor to tackling the tougher challenges we will inevitably face; because without savoring those occasional ‘small victories’ both mentally and bodily, how do we know that we stand a solid chance against a greater foe or a tougher situation?

Without some evidence of our true self-determination and confidence in our own psychological stamina, how do we even attempt to face down the larger dragons in our life?

We do so by recognizing and celebrating our winning those smaller tests of character strength, because they are the ones that have successfully prepared us for those larger LIFE challenges ahead.