Small victories – Photo by Sander
Alex stared at his bedroom ceiling, counting the water stains while his phone buzzed with another “running late” message to his boss. Empty coffee cups formed a small city on his nightstand. His laptop wheezed somewhere under a pile of clothes, forty-something browser tabs still open from last night’s YouTube rabbit hole.
“What’s the point?” he muttered, kicking aside a hoodie as he finally rolled out of bed. “It’ll all just get messy again.”
He’d read that book everyone kept talking about – the one about making your bed first thing in the morning. Some retired military guy preaching about how this simple act could change your life.
“Yeah, right,” Alex snorted, grabbing semi-clean jeans from the floor. “Because folding blankets will fix everything.”
The local coffee shop was packed, but one table remained empty except for an older man in a crisp white shirt, methodically arranging his things: laptop, notebook, pen, coffee cup – each item placed with deliberate care.
“Mind if I sit here?” Alex asked, already dropping his tangled mess of laptop and chargers onto the table. “Everywhere else is full.”
The man – Daniel, according to his laptop sticker – looked up with calm eyes. “Of course.” He shifted his items slightly, maintaining their precise alignment.
Alex’s coffee sloshed over his cup’s rim as he sat. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled, reaching for napkins. “One of those days. Actually, more like one of those lives.”
Daniel watched him dab at the spill. “Interesting choice of words. What makes it ‘one of those lives’?”
Maybe it was something in Daniel’s voice – no judgment, just curiosity – but Alex found himself talking.
“It’s just… everything’s always a mess, you know? I try to get organized, but what’s the point? Clean the apartment, it gets dirty. Clear my inbox, it fills up. Make my bed…” He gestured vaguely. “Two days later, it looks like a tornado hit it. Fighting entropy feels pretty stupid when entropy always wins.”
Daniel smiled, closing his laptop. “Tell me, do you know why ships rust?”
“What?”
“Ships. Ocean vessels. Why do they rust?”
Alex blinked. “Uh, oxidation? Salt water?”
“Correct. It’s a natural process. Inevitable. And yet, every morning, sailors clean and paint their ships. Every single morning, knowing full well that rust will return. Are they fighting a pointless battle?”
“That’s different,” Alex protested. “Ships are expensive. They need maintenance.”
“And your life doesn’t?” Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Your mind? Your space?”
He gestured to his own table setup. “I’m not organized because I expect perfection. I’m organized because clarity in my space helps create clarity in my mind. Every morning, I wake up and acknowledge that chaos is the natural state of things. Then I choose to push back, just a little.”
Alex glanced at his own mess spread across half the table, then at his phone showing three unread emails from his boss.
“But it never ends,” he said. “That’s what kills me. It’s this constant fight.”
“That’s exactly the point.” Daniel’s eyes crinkled. “The fight is the meaning. Each and all small victories over chaos – a made bed, a clean dish, a closed browser tab – it’s like telling the universe, ‘Not today. Today, in this small way, I choose order.'”
He laid his pen precisely parallel to his notebook. “You’re not fighting chaos because you expect to win forever. You’re fighting it because the act of fighting – the daily choice to push back against entropy – that’s what gives you strength. That’s what builds character.”
Alex looked down at his coffee cup, at the small brown ring it had left on the table. Without thinking, he reached for another napkin and wiped it clean.
Daniel nodded approvingly. “There you go. One small victory.”
“But tomorrow-”
“Tomorrow there will be new coffee stains. New challenges. New chaos. And tomorrow you’ll have another chance to choose order. That’s not failure – that’s life.”
Alex sat back, really looking at his table spread for the first time. His tangled charger. His crumb-covered laptop. His notifications bleeding red across his phone screen.
“Start small,” Daniel said, standing to leave. “One bed. One dish. One tab. Order isn’t about perfection – it’s about intention.” He gathered his things, each movement deliberate. “And Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“The sailors don’t paint their ships because they expect the rust to give up. They paint them because they refuse to.”
That evening, Alex stood in his doorway, looking at his mess of a room. For the first time, he didn’t see a hopeless task. He saw a series of small choices.
He picked up one coffee cup.
Tomorrow, there would be more mess. More chaos. More entropy.
But tomorrow, he would choose again.
One victory at a time made all the small victories.