celebrating victories

we celebrate our victories with our peers, with our families, with our subordinates.
there is a dinner. someone raises a glass. someone says they always knew you’d get here.
you smile. you say thank you. you mean it.

but the people at the table are not the people who were there.

because who sees the nights and the days spent for the victory.
who saw the light bulb of midnight flickering.
who saw the extra four hours go into the work after everyone else had logged off.
who saw the unscheduled write-ups of the documents that weren’t even yours.
who saw you get it wrong the first time, and the second, and not tell anyone.
who saw the version of you that didn’t know yet whether any of it would work.

nobody. that’s the answer. nobody saw that part.
the victory is public and the price was paid alone,
and those are not the same room, and they never happen at the same time.

so you sit at the dinner, being congratulated for the easy part,
the part that is over, the part that has a name now,
and the hard part is still inside you where nobody clapped for it.

none of that gets a toast.

and here is the thing i keep coming back to.
we don’t see the work in each other either.
we see the result and we celebrate the result
and we call that celebrating the person.
it isn’t. it’s just the only part we were shown.

nobody sees the work
until it has already taken something from you
that you can’t get back.

and by then you’re at the dinner, smiling,
raising a glass to a version of yourself
that the people clapping never actually met.