Freedom is a victory, but not all victories are freedom. The victories that matter are the ones that make you smile inside, not the ones that tick a box you’ve deemed it necessary to tick. Trophies, medals and awards have no place here. Shiny accolades might impress some people, but they’re mere facades for a sense of resignation, that this is all this person is worth. When you draw back the curtain, you see someone lost, with nowhere else to go, trapped. The victory that matters is being true to yourself and setting yourself free.
Victories have a use-by date. If you’re fighting to win, at some point you’re going to have to quit and give up the fight. A victory is an endpoint, a full stop to a journey. Full stops don’t mean progress; life doesn’t just end once you’ve reached your goal. Victories are quantifiable and hollow and threaten to trap us inside at every turn. We know, deep down, that we’re more than our resumé, and yet we still let it define us.
When we accept a victory, we give up the fight, we accept that this is as good as things are going to get and that there’s no place to go, no road to travel onward from here. Victory is a barrier, it’s an obstacle to freedom and liberation. It keeps us contained in convenient roles and at convenient levels. “I was only ever meant to get this far,” you might catch yourself thinking, “this is my destiny, and I’ve done pretty well, if I’m honest.” But it’s not well enough. Destiny is a man-made construct fabricated to keep us satisfied with our lot. It’s a limitation we put in place before we’ve even come within striking distance of getting there. Destiny and victory are full stops, and freedom doesn’t trade in full stops. Victories come in all shapes and sizes, some significant, some punitive, but none should be considerable enough to stop us in our tracks. Victory isn’t an end goal, it’s a process, a lifelong quest for something you can’t quite put your finger on.
That’s why you’ve chosen Freeletics. You don’t want something that’ll pat you on the back and wave goodbye in six weeks time. You want something that will stick with you and grow with you. You can’t afford the gym memberships your peers use, but this is a minor obstacle. You know that Freeletics offers you something no gym ever could: it offers you freedom.
Crossing the finish line of one race is approaching the start of another. The journey doesn’t end just because we’ve achieved an arbitrary goal. Freedom isn’t a victory that stays still; it’s constantly running away, not turning back to check how far behind we’ve fallen. It’s a bitch to achieve, but it’s about the only victory worth heading for because it doesn’t try to place a limitation on our self-worth. Victories are comfortable, they give us labels and talking points, but they’re end points that trap us within a restricted version of ourselves. Dare yourself to set yourself free from your victories and experience what it feels like to be truly free.
