Every victory counts. The size of the victory is immaterial. And the measurement of each victory is at any rate relative. What seems tiny to you can appear gigantic to someone else, and vice versa.

The little girl learned to tie her shoes. Victory! She spent time and effort acquiring the skill, she had many thoughts and emotions, she was sometimes frustrated and upset, and one day she did it! And she felt so good about it! I mean, she felt good about herself doing it. For her, it’s a big deal.

Don’t take your victories for granted.

To quit smoking is a victory; to cut your habitual smoking in half is a victory; to refrain from one cigarette is a victory. It doesn’t matter if you smoke 999 cigarettes in a given period rather than 1000 cigarettes. Every victory counts: it’s an absolute principle. You had to “work on yourself” in order not to smoke that one cigarette. You had to make choices and decisions against a lifelong habit. You did something that took you out of your comfort zone. You took a step forward. Victory!

People are very different one from the other. What you find difficult, I find easy; what you find easy, I find difficulty; my victories are unlikely to be the same as yours. It’s silly to think that other people are just like you. God forbid! And not because you’re an idiot, only because you’re different from me and I, from you. Criteria to define idiocy varies tremendously from culture to culture, and from person to person. Science hasn’t settled this issue yet, but there’s a professor at Harvard researching the theme with a well-designed double-blind experiment. He’ll have to wait until his paper gets peer-reviewed before he declares Victory!

A very shy person orders an omelet at a bistro in Paris. Victoire ! (The French put a space between the word and the exclamation mark.) It takes courage for the shy to be seen and to be heard. And it takes courage for the loudmouth to shut up. Victory! “Don’t be so shy. It’s just an omelet.” If that’s how you approach a shy person, you don’t know what it is like to be really shy—or, more broadly, what it is like to be someone else. It’s a great victory to become a bit more observant, a bit more sympathetic, a little less judgmental. The loudmouth has his reasons, much as we have ours. Let’s call him “exuberant” instead of “loudmouth.” Victory! I mean, the victory of changing your mind and your vocabulary. Here’s your homework: learn as many synonyms and euphemisms as possible for the word “idiot.” Skip the antonyms.

The contrary of victory is usually called “defeat.” But let’s ignore the scientific consensus and re-name it “I’m human” instead. You ate an extra cookie, you called someone an idiot, you forgot to pick up the kid at the kindergarten, you ate another extra cookie, and you called someone else an idiot. These aren’t defeats, but events punctuating your life as a human being. Tomorrow you’ll only eat one extra cookie and you’ll only call one person an idiot, and you’ll be right to declare Victory! Omigod, the kid at the kindergarten! If you hurry you’ll be only ten minutes late. Victory! Yes, being ten minutes late picking up your kid is a huge victory compared with not showing up. Every victory counts, every single victory; all victories are measured in relative terms; all victories are personal and subjective.

I’m partial to soft-baked dark-chocolate cookies, buttery salty chunky. Here in Paris, the French have perfected the art and have created victorious treats of which they are justifiably proud. At the time of writing this blog post (sitting at a café, of course) I haven’t eaten a cookie in, like, a week. Victory! . . . because the cookies and their brethren have given me inner foie gras, and lately I’ve been attempting to delay my rendez-vous with the fellows at the abattoir.

Acquiring skills, solving problems, changing habits, learning to apologize, learning not to apologize too much, refraining from an action, engaging in an action, saying yes, saying no, saying maybe: life in its entirety is a sort of chessboard where you play the endless game of “I’m human” and “Victory!” At the last move of the last round of the last match you’ll either enter “I’m human for all eternity” or “Victory for all eternity!” It’ll depend on the number of cookies you’ll have eaten. Warning: there’s such a thing as “not having eaten enough cookies in your life.” Every Harvard professor is currently testing how many are not enough and how many are too many.

Believe it or not, I wrote this post after attending a concert by The Country Rejects at the Salle Pleyel in central Paris. This is the inspiring program that they performed:

(Sweet) Jesus Is My Cookie
Chunkie Junkie
Don’t Expel Me from the Harvard of Your Heart
I’m Double-Blind With Love
My Mother-in-Law Is Human (Know What I Mean?)
She Called Me an Euphemism (for “Idiot”)
Kiss My Difference
On the Trottoir to the Abattoir
I Smoked My Last Cigarette (Again)
Victory Is a Four-Letter Word