Success Essay

What Success Means to Me:
To be successful is to be many different things to many different people. To me, success is defined in one, prolific quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection if children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived… this is to have succeeded.”

Along with the things in that quote though, I’d like some material success as well. Such as money, power, or objects, as many people in this world do. Mainly seeing God Forbid, Deadmau5, Lamb of God, the Foo Fighters, Pretty Lights and Audion in concert, owning a Lamborghini, Impreza and Aston Martin, having an architectural wonder of a “green” house, and having money to just play around with. My success is one in which I fulfill all of the stipulations in the above quote and have “made it” in life: Having money, having an almost complete if not complete bucket list, and having the knowledge that I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. Having never skydived, I must say that that is on the top of my list at the moment. I now can only imagine actually falling through the air, miles above the earth at nearly 200 miles per hour with the wind rushing by and feeling the dew condense on my flight suit as I fall through a cloud that I looked at earlier…

For some, total success or even partial success can seem almost impossible or impractical to obtain. They may be riddled with doubt, laden with laziness, and given obstacle upon obstacle to skirt. Such people may exist in the more unfortunate countries in the world such as Africa, Russia, and most of Central America. These countries don’t have the ways or resources in which it is very helpful or even needed for successful individuals. It is so saddening to see all of the available potential, and having no where for it to go.

Others though, with equal, if not even greater potential have every opportunity for success handed to them by another. Yet, they take no action to seize it. They seem to have no desire to grow. Success to these people is like a bothersome animal. It will come and look for food, affection, or just because, and is always shooed away by an impatient, arrogant and severely distracted individual. Success shys away, but always comes back to try it’s luck again.

For me success is a prominent thought in my mind all the time. It is the driving force that compels to go to school, keep a crappy job, get this one thing just right… Success is essentially what wills me to wake up in the morning. And without that will to succeed, I don’t think I would be half the person that I am today. Nor do I think that anybody would be more than that anyways. Success, and the will to succeed are so important in my mind, that if the ancient men of thousands upon thousands of years ago did not hunt to cease their hunger, that the human race would not exist. Yeah, it’s that important.

No one would be anywhere without success and the will or desire to succeed. We wouldn’t know if other people in other parts of the flat earth we lived on existed. We wouldn’t know why it got cold for a long time, then warm again, or how to make warmth wherever you happened to be. We wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves, and the human race would inevitably go extinct and yield to the other creatures of the world to gain knowledge and evolve. To succeed.

I personally don’t think success can get any more profound than that. Others may argue, but it’s not my life they should care about, and therefore, their arguments are moot. Success is the utter completion of the game of life, reaching the end of the long, winding road of such, and having fun and getting everything out of it that you can, while you can. Because in the end, success is really what you make it.