My worthiness is not defined by my achievements.

Achievements are simply the part of a person that can be summarised.

That is their entire advantage, and it explains how they end up standing in for everything else. Nobody has ever found a way to summarise that you are the one people ring when a car won't start in the rain, or that you notice the second a room has gone quiet, or the way you are with your sister's kids.

Those are not consolation prizes handed to people who didn't manage much. They are what gets said about you when you are not in the room, by people who have known you twenty years.

The list is real and worth having. It is just extremely short next to the other one.