Category of One
She won gold. But that’s not the entire story.
A nine-year-old stood alone on a podium this weekend - gold medal around her neck, beaming with pride. Pure joy. It should have been a simple moment. But it unsettled me in a way I didn’t expect, forcing me to confront a quiet habit many of us carry: the instinct to measure our lives against the others, in categories that are almost entirely arbitrarily defined. What if the real success in life isn’t winning against others, but refusing to play the same game and inventing way more fulfilling and fun games altogether?
Welcome back to Midlife Reimagined. This is our twenty eighth weekly exploration of the messy, magical territory between youth and old age. To read all the older posts, please subscribe below.
My now nine-year-old loves gymnastics. She goes to a weekly club without ever needing a reminder, practices at home unprompted, and choreographs her own routines. This is what passion looks like in real life.
This past weekend, she entered a local gymnastics competition for beginners. And for the first time, she won a gold medal. That giant smile on her face when she received the medal filled me with joy and pride. She worked for it. She deserved it.
And yet - there’s a part of me, conditioned since childhood to see life as a zero-sum game, that couldn’t help noticing something else: she was the only one on the podium. Medals were awarded by category and age. She was a category of one. First place, uncontested. Second and third stood empty.
I could feel the familiar instinct creeping in - the urge to qualify the win, to add an asterisk to her moment.
But before that instinct took over, something else landed. I mean, if you think about it, how special it is to be a category of one!
In business, we celebrate companies that achieve exactly that. “Category of one” is the holy grail. Of course, far more companies claim it than actually earn it. And it’s rarely about inventing something entirely new. More often, it’s about combining things in a way that meets people where they are, or understanding a specific audience so well that choosing you becomes obvious. The iPhone did the former - phone, music, entertainment, everyday tools. Airbnb did the latter.
In life, though, we seem to do the opposite. We are so scared of being the category of one that we keep placing ourselves into predefined categories, activtly looking for competitors and imaginary enemies, and insist on beating them.
When we were young, the comparison set was small. Siblings, cousins, neighbourhood kids, schoolmates. Then it widened as we grew up: national competitions, friends, colleagues. Now? It stretches across continents. We compare ourselves to strangers on social media - people we’ve never even met, living lives we only get a glimpse of through layers of carefully constructed filters, in places we’ve never been.
We want what others have, and some more. It started with the obvious - I’m taller, you’re faster, she has the better grades - and the cooler pencil case. Then we leave home. New city, new job, new life. And yet, it feels strangely familiar. We’ve simply drawn a new circle. Now it’s salaries, promotions, titles, awards. The metrics change, but the game doesn’t.
Each time we achieve something, there’s a fleeting moment of satisfaction. Then the circle expands again. More people. More benchmarks. More shiny objects. And somewhere along the way, we forget how we’ve got to where we are, and how much effort, sacrifice, love, support and aligned stars it has taken to get us here. Not the end to the life before, nor the beginning to the life after, but the present, the beautiful, wonderful, and almost magically here and now.
Some people grow up having dinner parties with CEOs before they’re ten. Others assume cleaners and plumbers are the only viable career choices. Some are raised with stability, support, tutors. Others carry responsibilities far beyond their years.
And yet we hide our privilege, or our struggles, and insist on competing in the same category - as if the playing field were ever level.
Until a nine-year-old stands alone on a podium by herself, beaming with pride.
Category of one.
It’s the ultimate competitive advantage - sustainable, defensible, and entirely self-defined. You set the terms. You make the rules. The only person you need to outperform is who you were yesterday.
The truth is, we are all category of one, whether we recognise it or not. No one else can be you as well as you can. And when we start defining our lives on our own terms, something shifts. We expand instead of contract. We collaborate instead of compete. We create instead of copy.
“I believe you can be anyone,” I was told as a child. So I tried - to become someone. Someone impressive. Someone better. But there was a second half to that sentence I didn’t hear at the time. “I believe you can be anyone. But you don’t have to be anyone other than yourself.”
Ultimately, it’s a choice. We can keep playing a never-ending zero-sum game. Or we can create our own. The former is exhausting, finite, and driven by fear. And the other is expansive, limitless, and rooted in joy.
My nine-year-old stood alone on that podium and felt nothing but pride. No asterisk, no comparison, no doubt. And so can you.
Find your podium and own it. You’ve earned it. It is the proof that you finally have the courage to refuse to be defined, categorised, or judged. Enjoy the view from up there, and smile for the supporters - all your loved ones. They are the ones who have always loved you and are proud of you for who you are.