Family secrets revealed.
Near the end of his life, my grandfather said to me,
“There are people who see things in you that you don’t see. And there’s no way in the world they’re going to tell you about them.”
After careful thought, I assumed they don’t tell you for two reasons.
- Because they are afraid that if you do well, you will leave their side.
- They’re afraid you’ll become their competition if you do better than them, or they won’t need them anymore.
My grandfather opted for the second reason and said.
“People don’t want you to shine, they don’t want you to become their competition, and so they will spend a lot of time, resources and energy to stop you from progressing. But that’s your advantage.”
I didn’t understand what my advantage was. And to explain it to me, he took out the checkerboard and challenged me to a game.
For my grandfather, life was not a game of chess, where the smartest always wins, but a game of checkers, where the winner is the one who learns to lose one checker to eat two in his turn.
I learned to play, thanks to him. — Although his method was quite controversial.
My grandfather cheated me for years.
One day after I beat him, I told him that I would have beaten him much earlier if he hadn’t been such a cheater.
And do you know what he replied?
“I don’t cheat you. I teach you how to win in life, even if life cheats you.”
Back to that day’s game.
Upon beating him, he said to me,
“Everybody tries to stop you from beating them. That’s why they don’t tell you what you’re worth. And that gives you two gifts. The first is the chance to learn from every defeat, and the second is to know that if you live long enough you will end up winning the game. You ended up beating me as a kid. You remember.
So you look up and let your competitors look down.
But that’s not all, he recommended me not to rest on my laurels and that every time I beat my enemies, I should look for others to compete with.
These were his words,
“When you are below, you can only see the trees in the forest. But when you climb above the height of the trees, you realize that the world is much bigger than your forest. So when you overcome your competition (your forest), find another enemy to defeat. Only then will you grow (only then will you realize how big the world can be).”
Takeaway
On the day of the checkers game, I learned a lot from my grandfather, but above all, I understood that in life, you can only be two things: challenger or defender of the title, and that it is better to be the former than the latter.
Because the defender of the title, in the end, loses it.
However, if you master some area of your life and find a new goal to strive for, a new summit to climb, and a new enemy to defeat, you grow as a human being.
So, dear reader, don’t expect people to tell you what you are worth. They won’t. To find out for yourself. When you win them, look for bigger goals and remember to have an aspiring mentality; only then will you continue to grow.
A virtual hug
AG
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