The record that inspires one generation may become the minimum expected of the next.

A record that astonished one generation becomes the entry requirement for the next. What was extraordinary is absorbed into the baseline, and the achievement stops being remarkable without ever having become easier. The bar moves and the effort involved does not.

This is worth remembering when your own accomplishments stop feeling like anything. What you can now do easily was once out of reach, and the fact that it has become normal to you is a measure of how far you have come rather than evidence that it was never hard. Occasionally comparing yourself to your earlier self is a corrective the moving baseline never provides.