Since my early years of education, teachers and other outside influences have preached the importance of receiving an education. You'll be a much more well rounded candidate for anything you aspire to do, insuring a life of much more success. I followed their instructions blindly, knowing that trusting the system and trusting those who have my best interest in mind wouldn't possibly lead me astray.
As my academic career developed and everyone chose their own path, the material became more sophisticated, the projects became more challenging, it was a whole new ball game. It's a whole new competitive world where people are constantly comparing your performance relative to theirs. People brag about their accomplishments and often come off as arrogant, but I think this is just a defense mechanism to combat the judgement and competitiveness with self-assurance.
I started thinking back to the emphasis put on the quest for success. It was so heavy and came from all angles. It was carved into our brains and served as the motivation for everything we were to do.
But what defines success?
What I've realized is that there simply isn't be one concrete, universal definition of success with which people abide by and recognize. Even moreso, there cannot be just one definition. There are far too many professions, talents, skills, fields, specialties, that make it impossible to throw such a generalized umbrella term across it all.
And hell, let's not get so technical about it.
We are people. Every person is different. Every story is different. Every reason for being is different. How can you measure success this way? That's why it's our job to define it for ourselves- not in the sense that we disregard all other definitions of success, but that we use those definitions to tailor it to fit our own.
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