A few months ago I was sitting in the guidance center waiting for some transcripts. I was having one of those "high-stress, low-patience" days and I was just in a very bad mood. As I waited, I noticed a little book on one of the coffee tables called "What happiness is." Cynically curious, I picked up the book and fingered through it. Each page was different quote about what happiness is, and as I read each one, I started to slowly lift out of my bitter mood.
The first one I read was "Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open." - John Barrymore.
I could buy that, I was starting to feel a little better.
The next one I read was "All who would win joy must share it, happiness was born a twin." - Lord Byron.
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"Happiness is going to the 20 year reunion and finding that the boy elected most likely to succeed, didn't."
Needless to say, I felt a little disenfranchised by this one. Having won that category in the yearbook this year, I felt a sudden added pressure. I was now indentured for 20 years to try to succeed in order to keep all of you from being happy. It was a lose-lose situation for all of us.
For a time after, my thoughts often drifted to that 20-year reunion. How was I going to be successful? How was I going to insure I fulfilled my high school yearbook's prophecy? How was I going to be a success?
Immediately, my thoughts drifted to money. Success to most Americans immediately means big houses, hot cars, bling-bling. I had no guarantees to myself that I would be a success. There was nothing I could do but continue to work hard, stay up late writing papers and hang posters my entire life for dances. I didn't necessarily want this.
So I began to question what success is to me. And it's more than the cliche of happiness. What success is to me, could be radically different than what success is to anyone else in this room. It's up to me to define it for me. It's up to me to decide what I have to do in my life to make it a
The American college dictionary defines success as 1. The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors, 2. The gaining of wealth, possessions, or the like. This has been the general seances for the past hundred years or more. But in more modern days the prospective of success has changed slightly. It has shifted to having a good education, going to collage, getting a carrier getting married & having children. Having your own home and eventually dying and passing it all on to a child or children. Success is no longer satisfaction or personal goals. It has been supplemented by the goals society has preset for the populous that have been drilled into the minds of the young from the very beginning. To a man named Santiago in The Old Man and The Sea by: Earnest Hemingway, success was to conquer the Marlin Santiago had fought for so long. But as a cruel twist of fate his success is taken away in an instant when the prize he had fought so hard for was eaten by sharks, leaving Santiago with no spoils left to show for his hard fight. He was even so crushed by of the loss of the Marlin that he cried out to the sea "I am beaten.....hear stands a broken man" (234). Santiago still experienced success in the fashion that when he returned to port the little boy named Manolin that he had taught how to fish earlier in the novel was allowed to come back to fish with him. This was the ultimate form of success that was perceived for Santiago by Hemingway. To Jean Valjean in Les Misreables By: Victor Hugo , Valjean's success was represented in the form of going from convict to loving father of a daughter. The little girl named Cosette may not have been his true daughter, but after he had had dinner with a bishop that had seen the possibility of good in he started the transformation of his life. he met Cosettes mother and vowed to save her daughter from the place where she was being kept. The success Valjean experienced was what made his character the man that he was. But to Willa Cather in My
Happiness is a reprise from the many trials and turmoil of life, and so it is natural that we should actively seek it. Ironically though, in our naïve belief that we can somehow augment the amount of happiness in our world, we are actually making our world more depressing to live in. Both John F. Schumaker, in The Happiness Conspiracy, and Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, argue that our myopic pursuit of happiness is actually counterproductive. The two authors attempt to persuade the reader that happiness is, and should be, an almost-serendipitous byproduct of a truly fulfilling life, and therefore should not be an explicit objective.
People encounter happiness in different ways. For some, joy comes “with the tide” right to them, while “[f]or others they sail forever on the horizon,
In the book “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley provides a sort of warning that society today is should seek something else rather than happiness, or we could end up like the characters in the story. The idea of pure happiness is so constant throughout Brave New World that it is as if the characters don’t know the true meaning of being happy.
Success means to live a life in alignment with what brings us real joy. In my case, “success-joy” comes in many guises. At times, in being persistent with my current dreams, others, investing time and energy in what makes my life shine, and that is, without a doubt, when my life is at service of humanity and when I cultivate happy and healthy close relationships. I tend to define success as a state of being, a constant process of unfolding rather than a place to arrive. It is the journey of getting to know ourselves, in order to fully occupy every aspect of what we are; a forever changing aspiration, a state of being in which we realize that life’s greatest rewards spring from our capacity to relate to adversity in innovative ways. I have also discovered that real success shows up again when we debunk and deconstruct every single stereotype and assumption we have about ourselves. In this way, we feel capable to challenge what is commonly accepted as wisdom and then we have the opportunity to change and integrate our values with greater ones. There is an enormous joy when we feel free to play with the possible new scenarios that our imagination and creativity compelled us to try. A successful state of being is alert and grounded within us with the certainty, that the choices we embark on are in resonance with what we consider is the truth of what we are in that precise
Success is a term used by almost every individual person on this green and blue planet that we call Earth. Whether it is parents, college professors, teachers, bosses, co-workers, and inspirational speakers, they all apply this word to everyday life, however what does it truly mean? Success is a noun that, by definition, stands for “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” Although this is the official definition, society has a different definition for the phrase success. Society has defined the phrase success as being wealthy, having quite a few material items, having a stable well-paying job, and a healthy family as a side bonus. There are members of society
What is success and how do you obtain it? This question isn’t so easy to answer, and there is no one definite answer. Everybody views success differently, and everyone accomplishes success in different manners. In order for you to have a better understanding of what success is to me, I will elaborate on the three characteristics I believe are the most essential to have before one can obtain success. Next, I will retell the story of a character in the classic basketball movie “Hoosiers” and how they obtained success. Finally, I will also share a time in my life where I have felt success.
Stearns, Peter N. “The History of Happiness. (Cover Story).” Harvard Business Review 90.1/2 (2012): 104-109. Business Source Complete. Web. 6 June 2015.
Robert Frost, well known American poet of 191 poems, has a common message in his writing. Focusing mainly on Birches, The Road Not Taken, Dust of Snow, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Beech, Come In, and In Winter In, his main message is to always focus on the positive when everything else is trying to pull you down. This idea could also be seen as trying to always keep a positive attitude. The thesis above can be proven through a textual analysis.
Success is within the mind of the individual. A large portion of ones life is spent working to become successful. People are told throughout childhood to work hard so they can grow up and make lots of money. But success takes many different forms. Different people have different interpretations of what success means to them. For some, success is measured by social status and wealth; for others success is determined only by the amount of happiness one feels.
For a few of us, success is being a stay-at-home housewife, successfully bringing up your youngsters. For others, success might be instructing or directing. To others, success might be characterized by the measure of instruction you accomplished. You may feel that you need to get your doctorate degree, in light of the fact that every other person in your family has done likewise. Nobody can figure out what success is to you, yet you. There are excessively a large number of us living miserable lives, since we are effectively accomplishing brief comment another person happiness, which implies that you are unsuccessful to
and successes as well as many pains, griefs, and troubles in ones life. A happy
Success and happiness are typically seen as two ideas that are dependent on each other. People often believe that in order to be happy one must have a successful life. When reading about success, most of the time people stumble upon happiness bringing success. People have this typical idea of success being money, power, and a luxurious lifestyle with a promising future and a pinch of happiness. However, there will never be a universal explanation as to what success and happiness are because it’s different for every person. In order for someone to feel successful, one must learn how both happiness and success work together. People need to get over the idea of succeeding and achieving goals in order to be content and focus more on being happy with themselves.
Gilbert, Dan." The surprising science of happiness." Ted Talks. Ted. Ted Talks, Monterey. 1 Feb. 2004. Lecture.
Graduation: the last day that I would unwillingly set foot on the fields of Horizon High School. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, and tried so hard to keep my feet moving one after the other in order to maintain my perfect stature. After the two hour wait of opening speeches, class songs, and the calling off of the five hundred plus names that were in front of me, it was finally my turn. As my row stood up and we walked towards the stage it had set in at last, this is it, I am done. My high school career ended on that night, but it didn’t close the book that is my life, it only started a new chapter, and with it came a whole slue of uncertainties.