“What have you achieved?”

Long long ago in a city of steel far far away...
A smokey student hostel room
A tiny television set with a PS2 plugged in
Four pairs of eyes glued to the screen
A burly and hairy beast of a man crushes the PS2 controller’s keys to within an inch of their lives
A relatively smaller and yet almost as hirsute man with a taste for things profane nimbly taps the keys of his battered old PS2 controller.

Enough mood... Now on with the story. The beast man known henceforth as GC and the littler man called AMSTM were playing Pro-Evolution Soccer and were in the middle of a hotly contested match — That being said, most PES matches played in said room were fairly hotly contested anyway. This time though, it was personal... If memory serves, it was the 82nd minute and AMSTM pulled off a screamer of a goal, much to GC’s bitter disappointment.

GC’s anguish was compounded moments later, when one of the carefully crafted onscreen sprites scored another goal, doubling AMSTM’s lead. Being a sporting loser isn’t one of GC’s more well known qualities and so he stood up, like a gorilla in battle (making itself large) and bellowed at AMSTM, “WHAT HAVE YOU ACHIEVED?”

Silence....

I’ve been thinking of that line since the time I woke up this morning. Not for the same reasons as above obviously. For what it’s worth, I recall AMSTM being stunned witless by that outburst and the rest of the room cracking up with laughter. But anyway, back to the point... As we roll into December, the last month of this , the double-O decade, I found me asking that question of myself. “What have you achieved?”.

For sure, it’s been a tumultous and exciting decade, which saw me do a ton of foolish, fun and worthwhile things (sometimes all at once), it saw me meet a wide array of people; from the weird to the downright bizarre (you know who you are). I read a number of good books, saw some brilliant films, heard some awesome music — saw every single live music show I’ve ever been to, in this decade.

There’ve also been disappointments, failures, times that I’ve let myself, my family and my friends down, times I’ve been despondent, times when I felt tomorrow would suck even more. But none of this really amounts to having achieved anything. Educational qualifications happen. I don’t consider them achievements. News stories too, happen. They’re hardly achievements.

So what have I achieved? That being asked, what the hell have you achieved lately?