When I was younger, I was very good at sports.

I ran fast, jumped far, and I was pretty good at basketball too. I took pride in it and secretly thought many of the other girls in class were just weak.

That sense of superiority felt completely real at the time. Until one day, a simple truth hit me hard.

It turned out that many of those girls weren’t weak at all. They just never stepped forward.

Girls who developed early during puberty often didn’t want attention. They didn’t want to be laughed at or become the center of unwanted eyes. During P.E. class, many of them were in what I now think of as “yield mode.”

And I believed I was winning.

The truth was not that no one was stronger than me. It was that no one was competing with me.

I realized this much later so late that I had already passed that age.

My body developed slowly, and perhaps my thinking did too. At the time, I believed that was an advantage. In reality, the field had simply been empty.

Some truths don’t humiliate you. They simply place you back into reality.

Many victories aren’t because we are particularly strong. Sometimes the conditions just happen to favor us.

Many feelings of superiority are simply gifts from the background we happen to stand in.

No one was really weak. They just didn’t want to compete with you.

True maturity isn’t discovering that you are incapable. It’s realizing that many advantages you thought were yours were simply positions created by circumstance.

Maybe life truly begins the moment we finally meet a real opponent.



—— XC Scribbles · 壹佰伍拾肆 CLIV 📷