I just wanted to share something with you…

Well, I am back from Afghanistan.  One adventure over, and wondering what the next one will be.  But I am starting to reflect a little on my time out in Afghan.

And of course when you do that you start to look at what you did and how you did it, and for me that’s when the doubts creep in.  Did I do it well enough? Was I good enough?  I wanted to go and test myself…how did I fare in that test?

But then on Wednesday we had our medals parade.  And the OC of our deployment gave a short final speech at the end of the parade just before we fell out and rejoined our families.  They are not his own words – they belong to Theodore Roosevelt – but to hear them…well, they made me feel a lot better about how I tackled the deployment itself.

And here they are:

It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worth cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

I think they’ve replaced Kipling’s ‘IF’ as my favourite quote now.

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