The Ultimate Thank-You Note

Discouragement has always, and will always be looming around the world waiting to rear its unnerving head at the right time, being sure only to kick us when we’re already down. But sometimes discouragement is personified by the people we least expect. It’s to those people who I write this rant of slightly haughty gratitude.

Thank you for telling me there will always be someone better than me. Thank you for advising me to not try out in that section of the choir because there were so many people better than me. Thank you for giving me the percentage of students who lose their scholarship minutes after I get my acceptance/scholarship letter. Thank you for telling me that living in a foreign country isn’t feasible for someone my age. Thank you for wishing me good luck with a smirk while I applied for the internship of a lifetime. Thank you for telling me I wouldn’t ever get that 4.0. Thank you for constantly rolling your eyes and looking down your noses at me every time I mentioned my dream of becoming a lawyer. Thank you for brushing my dreams aside and telling me that I’d change my mind before I got to college. Thank you for always telling me how hard law school was compared to anything else I’d ever done in my life, and that getting in would not be an easy task.

I’m thanking you, you see, because you became the voice in my head that I’ve grown to hate. I’ve grown to hate it so much that I refuse to let it beat me. In turn, I’ve refused to let you beat me, and I’ve won. You’ve made my smile much bigger when I do achieve what I set out to do, and I thought I ought to say thanks.