Society, Success, and You

     This post won't be directly about any one of the books but instead, a general theme that I've seen in blog posts and in the book club readings.

      It seems that everyone the blog wants to be happy and successful.  Actually, almost everyone in the world wants to be happy and successful in their life; I don't think anyone except for a sociopath would actively strive for a depressing and unsuccessful life.

     Firstly, who or what defines success?  I think that most people look towards society to see how success is defined.  When we think of success, things that come to mind are a satisfying career, money, power, a happy life, and good relationships with those you care about.  These vary from person to person but for the most part we share similar ideas of success.  From a evolutionary perspective, success is surviving and successfully creating healthy offspring that will live on to carry your genes.  The want to raise healthy offspring is embedded into the human mind; it can be seen in our parents.  Most of our parents told us to get good grades and to work hard in school so we can go to a high valued college.  Getting into a good college would supposedly result in a good career and a happy life.  Then after that, you are supposed to get married and have children who are also successful.

      However, I am willing to bet that most students' main motivation in school is not to raise a family.  We want to do well in school and in life because it has been taught to us that being unsuccessful is bad and shameful.  No one looks down on the rich or heads of corporations; the homeless and low end job workers are looked down on.  People point to the homeless and say, "Do well in school or you will end up like that." Now we are afraid to fail; we don't want to be looked down upon with shame.

     Some people may say, "Why aren't I happy with all this hard work and trying to be successful?"  I think many people feel unhappy because they are not trying to be successful for themselves, but for society instead.  If you truly wanted to be successful for yourself, then doing hard work in school and challenging yourself as much as possible would bring you satisfaction instead of annoyance.  When getting an A in a class feels more like doing a chore than completing a challenge, it would make one unhappy.  I believe most of these different mindsets try to change your view of the problem instead of facing the problem itself.

      

      I guess my point is if you want to be happy then you should truly want to be successful for yourself and not just pile on the work and activities to please your parents or other people.

Tldr; Do you truly want to be successful for yourself?

I didn't want to write that much, but I'm pretty sure I'm one of the last people to post for the book club thing and I didn't want to end it with a rushed post. Congrats if you made it through the wall of text. I'll be going now. Bye! AHH WERE ALL GONNA DIE!!@!@! dafsafxcvdfmyschelf