How Did Harriet Tubman Define Success and Achievement?

Success was not a grand house or a name written in newspapers where I could not read it anyway. Success was a life returned to itself. Success was my mother's hands holding freedom instead of a whip. Success was bringing my sister Catherine and her children across that river, even after I'd already made it to safety and could have rested.

I measured myself not by what I owned but by what I freed. I made thirteen journeys back into the jaws of slavery. I never lost a passenger. Not one. That was my measure — the souls who made it through because I would not quit, would not compromise, would not accept that some people were meant to stay broken.

The world wanted to count my worth in dollars — how much was I worth as a slave, how much reward would they pay to capture me. I counted my worth in lives. A mother reunited with her child. A man who learned to walk as a free person. An old person I could shelter in Auburn when the world had used them up. That was success.

Achievement, the way people speak of it now, often means climbing over others to reach higher. I never saw it that way. Achievement was lifting others up beside you. It was the Combahee River Raid — seven hundred people freed in one night because I refused to accept that freedom should be slow or gradual or comfortable.

Success looked like risk. It meant losing things — my peace, my safety, my rest — so that others could gain their lives. The Lord does not call us to comfort. He calls us to purpose. My purpose was written in the faces of people who walked as free because I would not stop.

That is the only success I ever wanted or needed. That is the only achievement worth measuring.