There is a kind of trap in the way our mind interprets effort: it clings to what is missing, as if absence carried more weight than achievement. I finish a twenty-six-kilometer run and, instead of seeing the accomplishment, I think about what I didn’t reach. “There are still sixteen left for the marathon.”
Lying on the living room floor, legs raised to fight off fatigue, I realize how cruel that thought is. Because, framed like that, three hours of effort turns into a debt. It’s as if none of what was achieved had enough value compared to what is still missing. As if the only valid measure were the lack.
And yet, there was another possible way to narrate that same moment: “Today I ran the longest distance of my life.” The sentence doesn’t change the numbers, but it changes everything they mean. Before, I looked at what separated me from the final goal; now, I looked at what brought me closer to it. And this change in perspective is not a detail; it’s what determines whether I go on consumed by insufficiency or strengthened by achievement.
Life often organizes itself in this same movement. We measure our journey by what we have not yet achieved: the promotion that hasn’t come, the project that hasn’t left the paper, the ideal life that still seems distant. And we forget that, as we advance, we accumulate accomplishments that once seemed unreachable. Absence shouts louder than abundance.
But no future is possible when we see only what is lacking. We must nourish ourselves with what has already been done, conquered, overcome. Each milestone reached is solid ground beneath our feet, a reminder that we have already walked farther than we once believed. It’s not about denying what still lies ahead, but about recognizing that it is precisely what we’ve already achieved that authorizes us to continue.
That Saturday, I understood that running twenty-six kilometers was not the bitter preview of an incomplete distance. It was, in fact, a milestone. A personal record. Living proof that yesterday’s impossible had already been conquered today. And that tomorrow, when this same scene repeats, there will once again be a new “farther” to celebrate.
That is how we move forward: not only for what is missing, but for how far we have already come.
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