Over my shoulder

Looking back...who has been with you?

Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash

One thing I think a lot about lately is gratefulness.

About what it means to be grateful not only for the big things, but also for the people, moments, opportunities and circumstances that have brought us to where we are today. My dad always told me to remember all of this and always be grateful for what we have, who we have and remember that we have not done anything alone.

And the more I think about it, the more I realise that I don’t really believe in the idea of being self-made.

We hear this expression quite often. I heard someone on tv say it about someone the other day.

I built this myself.
I got here on my own.
Nobody gave me anything.
Everything I have, I created myself.

I understand where this comes from; I certainly believe that we should be proud of our hard work! However, we should always look over our shoulder and see who is there. Who has cheered us on, who has helped us, who put in a good word for us - we ahould always remember that!

There are things we achieve because we worked incredibly hard for them. Because we persisted when things were difficult. Because we studied, tried, failed, started again, took risks, made sacrifices and kept going! We should give ourseleves credit for all of that.

Self-made? I am not so sure.

Because when I look at my own life, I can see so many people in it.

• People who taught me something.

• People who believed in me.

• People who gave me an opportunity.

• People who recommended me for something; a job, a project.

• People who introduced me to someone else.

• People who listened when I needed to talk.

• People who encouraged me when I wasn’t sure I could do something.

• People who challenged me.

• People who shared their knowledge generously with me by sending me book recommendations, articles, or simple arrangoing a Zoom call with me even if they had never seen me before and I had reached out by email.

• People who simply happened to say the right thing at exactly the right moment.

• And sometimes, people who may not even realise that they helped me at all (and I need to remind them)!

Acknowledging the people who helped us doesn’t make our achievements smaller; quite the opposite!

We can say, “I worked very hard for this,” while also saying, “I could not have done all of this entirely on my own.”

I do not want to look at my life one day and think, Look what I built all by myself.

I would rather look over my shoulder and think:

Look how many people were part of this. Don’t they say, it takes a village?

The Music Highlight

This song - wow! What a gem. I remember that around 1994-95, my dad was working for months on the island of Corfu at a restaurant and we went to visit him for a week. This song was playing everywhere. Enjoy!