A long shot is not a miracle

A student in Riyadh hopes for a place at a famous university abroad. Thousands apply. Most will not get in.

It is tempting to call it a miracle if she does. It is not. Every year, a certain number of people are admitted. Someone gets the place. It is unlikely that it will be her, but it is not unheard of. It is a long shot, which is a different thing.

Her younger brother wants to play the guitar well. He learns one new chord a week and practises the old ones for twenty minutes every evening. In a year he will be able to play most of the songs he likes.

That is not a miracle either. It is not even unlikely. It is slow, often boring, and entirely within his reach if he keeps going.

These two outcomes need different things from us. A long shot needs us to accept the odds, try anyway, and not take the result as a judgement on our worth. Steady progress needs patience and the willingness to turn up on the evenings when nothing seems to be improving.

A miracle is the only one that cannot be planned for. It is something that has never happened before, and nobody sensible builds a business, a career or a year around it.

The trouble starts when we confuse them. When something that only needs persistence gets treated as impossible, we never begin. When something that would need a miracle gets treated as a matter of effort, we never stop.

Most of what we want sits in the first two groups. That is good news, if we are honest about which one it is.