Badge of Honor

At what age do we fool ourselves into believing that over-achieving, showing up early, increasing productivity, sleeping less hours is something to crow about? Don’t get me wrong. These have their place. But 24/7/365?

It seems as though there are bragging rights to be had when you tell someone you only sleep 4 hours a night, just to get up by 4am to start your day to do whatever it is that you do. And, conversely, if you sleep the prescribed 7-9 hours and the alarm goes off at a very reasonable 7am….well, you are an underachieving sloth. A bit of an exaggeration, or at least I hope so. But you get the point.

Life is not just about bragging rights on our accomplishments. It’s about having 5 or blessedly more people in your life where you can have soul-baring conversations. It’s not a race to see who is more exhausted. It’s about sauntering at times. It’s not about humping to get more scout badges on your sash. It’s about the joy of the experience as you are working toward something.

Because you don’t always win if you have the most badges on your sash. Sometimes you win when you don’t.