Success:

Success is a word that when people describe what they want their future to have, they say this. What they really mean by “success” is fame and fortune. When you think of success, you probably think of people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, maybe even Kim Kardashian. All those people have had huge successes in their fields, but to be successful, you don’t have to be as well known as all these names. Success, the accomplishment of an aim or purpose, can be found everywhere.

Success can be a lot of things. It can be getting all A’s for an entire marking period, or finally getting a job so you can save up for a really nice car. Success can be found in little things; it ranges. But overall, success is success. Yet, people still have this fixed meaning in their head, that success is about making it big in this word  by having lots of money. The other day in my economics class, when given the question: “What are some financial goals you have for the future?”, many kids wrote down that they want to be “successful and earn lots of money.” Being famous in your field is definitely success, but what people don’t understand is that it is so much more than owning fancy cars and multiple houses. Success is about taking a goal, and completing it. You don’t have to be famous to be successful, you just have to have a purpose, and you work towards that purpose until you get it.

One antonym for success is failure. People are scared of failing people, no one aims at disappointing others. Success usually takes time, you have to work towards it. Of course, there are some exceptions made for those who got lucky, maybe making a funny video of them doing something and posting it on youtube. But usually, people work for what they want, which could take days to years, but it can be destroyed in minutes. There is a quote in a song from Mean Girls: The Musical, that says: “More is always better, because when you have less, you have more to lose,” which is true. Losing $1,000 dollars is definitely worse for a family who doesn’t have a lot of money compared to Donald Trump. People wouldn’t really say my family is successful, I mean we are pretty stable. They wouldn’t say we were successful because we have less, which means we have more to lose. Famous and rich people, if something were to happen with them, would still probably have money, and would still be well known, most likely with a bad connotation affiliated with their name now, but they would still have their gains from their success. My family would suffer greatly if misfortune were to come our way, but just because we have more to lose compared to say Mark Zuckerberg, doesn’t mean we have failed. People believe that success is having enough wealth that you have enough to fall onto when you fail, but that isn’t true.

After graduating High school, my dad decided that he would join the military since he wasn’t very good at school. Now, he is a Staff Sergeant, which is the “sergeants of sergeants” as my mom explained it. He also has a really good job, which is often done by people who have retired. His military career has been pretty successful so far, but people wouldn’t really look at it like that. We aren’t known, we aren’t rich, we are “comfortable”, as my dad always says so people assume that my dad isn’t successful. Even his mom, who loves him so much, makes jokes about how his brother is a TV show writer and how my dad is only in the military. He is successful, he planned on joining the military, and he did, gaining a high ranking and a good job. He pursued a task, and he accomplished it greatly. If that is not success, then I don’t know what is.

In essence, success is much more than becoming rich and living luxuriously. It is about setting a goal and achieving it. Success can be found everything, from big to small, and should be acknowledged for.