Why Being Alive Is Your Greatest Accomplishment

True greatness isn’t in outcomes. It’s in resilience.

“What is your greatest achievement?”

“What is a big accomplishment you had in your life?”

I hate answering questions like these.

They are by far the worst in job interviews. As if the answer to this question has any bearing on whether or not I’m qualified for the job.

Recently, I was asked this question by my friend Tom and even worse, he challenged me to write about it.

So one morning, I gave it my best shot — but all it did was slap me with a horrific case of writer’s block.

The truth is I don’t have any fancy degrees, awards, or accreditations that will knock your socks off. I never had any cool-sounding job titles. There’s no business that I took from 0 to millions in revenue. There isn’t even a heartfelt story I can impress you with about how I saved a stranger from the jaws of death.

Woe is me right?

Not really!

Life is challenging and a rollercoaster at times. Yet it’s our greatest gift. And my life has been far from easy. But who’s hasn’t?

I grew up amid chaos and dysfunction from my parent’s marriage. I watched my mother battle cancer. I had bad breakups, lost friends, was estranged from family members, and relied on medication for too long to cope with crippling anxiety.

Yet fast forward to this very moment and all of those struggles have made me the person I am today.

Can you relate?

Because I’m goddamn grateful to simply be alive.

Every day I feel increasingly blessed to be on this journey, healthy, and get to enjoy all the many privileges that life offers. Like for one, trying to wax poetic on Medium for all you beautiful people to read.

But one of the biggest insights every single struggle, failure, and disappointment has constantly reminded me of is:

When life seems to be steady and going well, it’s easy to forget how vulnerable we are and how fragile the simple joy of just being can be.

Reminders of this fragility can strike at any time.

There’s a famous line by French poet Jacques Prévert in which he profoundly says:

“I recognized happiness by the noise it made when it left.”

How freakin’ true is that?

In life there is always the possibility of pain or a setback — a sudden backache, a relationship breakup, a career crisis, or worse, failing health for you or a loved one.

Hell, earlier this year I woke up in the morning with no vision in my right eye and thought I was going blind.

And when reminders like these hit, that loud thud of getting sucker-punched to your gut is the sudden awareness of how good your life has been just from simply being alive and healthy.

It’s indeed the sound of your happiness heading for the exits.

Our lives are filled with countless simplicities — endless, tiny joys that are more than enough for us to feel fulfilled and accomplished. Instead, we define how meaningful and extraordinary our life is based on accomplishing some big feat, how many trophies we have on our mantle, or the number of acronyms we have after our name.

Sometimes we’re so fixated on waiting to celebrate the next big win we forget to acknowledge that to be here still standing is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Sometimes we yearn so much for that next moment which takes our breath away — that we ignore that the breath we are taking right here at this moment is just as beautiful and precious.

And sometimes, we flat out undervalue what it means to simply be alive.

So back to my friend Tom’s question…

What is my greatest achievement?

That I try to live each day seeing life as the precious gift that it unequivocally is.

Because truthfully we all fall down. We all have moments we wish we could take back. Hell, we all have days in which it can be hard just to get out of bed.

But somehow we live.

Somehow we learn that what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, wiser, and more appreciative of the life all around us and within us.

That’s alone is a great accomplishment because while as beautiful and amazing as it is, life can also be hard.

So perhaps our greatest achievements in life are not defined by outcomes — the things we deliver, or the places we arrive. Instead, it’s defined by the effort we give every day, our ability to bounce back from chaos and pain and then turn those struggles into life lessons.

With that being said, please Tom, no more questions like this.

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