You do You

What is it to be successful in America?

People yearn for acceptance. Although people strive everyday to better themselves, it is extremely difficult to transcend this inherent ideology. We focus on self-improvement, yet those goals are shaped solely by society's influence. From birth, the ideal profiles of success are ingrained into our minds by our parents, but vastly more from society. As American citizens, we often imagine true success through a materialistic scope and by how much money one makes; it's the easiest way to quantify success. By flaunting his wealth, Jay Gatsby would surely fall under "successful" through this scope with his extravagant weekend parties as Nick observes how "on weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight" (Fitzgerald 39). More importantly, we are told that we are successful once we make a valuable contribution to society, ultimately pleasing the similar crowd-pleasing citizens of America.
Image result for you get a car gif
Success, however, can only be achieved by accomplishing personal goals. Personal, as in self-motivated, uninterrupted, holy goals. Once outside influences, such as wealth and perception from society, are removed, the ideal meaning of "success" begins to change. Questions such as "Why are others praised more? Why are they happier? Why can't I be like them" change to "What do I value? How can I be happier? Have I accomplished what I want?" It can be extremely hard to remove those outside influences as there seems to be an unmistakable correlation between wealth and America's definition of success. However, I would be a hypocrite to force this ideology upon you, as you would live your life trying to follow my definition of success. Your own definition of success is what truly matters; this is just my sea of thoughts.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 29, 2017 at 5:23 PM

    It was comical how you connected the name of the blog to your writing. Your definition of success is interesting that people define if they are successful themselves because if that was true nobody would ever be successful, everyone compares themselves to others.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Really Confident Girl

Image
The Fearless Girl is a powerful embodiment of the feminist movement. The young brave girl is a stark representation of the courage it takes to stand up for equal rights. However, the sole purpose of the girl was to serve as a counterpart to the Charging Bull, which is an "aggressive threat to women and girls - a symbol of patriarchal oppression”. If Di Modica really wanted to move his expensive masterpiece away from the attention-drawing girl, Fearless Girl would then become “really confident girl” as one author notices. But honestly, what’s wrong with that? Feminists have had to consistently prove themselves over and over throughout history. Wave after wave of feminists with slightly different agendas have had to take tiny yet monumental steps for women in order to be taken seriously. Now, in the 21st century, the role of feminism is already well established and very widespread. Feminists are making real change happen. So why do they feel the need to prove that they are bra
Read more

Bubbles!

Whenever you go to an ethnically foreign place, such as a restaurant or a market, you'll notice how the environment that surrounds you is contained within a very finite area - a bubble. The moment you walk in through a door, smells, sounds, sights, and all your senses are struck with the ruminated cultures of centuries of history, often from thousands of miles away. Specifically, the way people speak, the manner in which people address each other, the language that permeates the bubble, is subtly yet vastly different. What I mean is, unlike the very apparent "role playing, side-step, shilly-shally, and vagueness and innuendo" in the English language, my Chinese speaking family is one that does not partake in such mannerisms. English is  peculiar distinct distinctive idiosyncratic particular personal special specific  unique in that there are hundreds of substitutes or complimentary words that mean basically the same thing. Chinese, on the other hand is more direct, requir
Read more

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Call it what you want - totting, skipping, skip diving, skip salvage, curb shopping, trash picking or street scavenging - dumpster diving is just one of the names in that trash pile of labels. It’s not only a means of survival, but also a “way of life.” The show Extreme Cheapskates on TLC highlights some of the most frugal people in the world, who stop at nothing to save money. Sometimes these people aren’t even poor; they are just very tight penny-pinchers. Creating reusuable toilet paper, reusing dental floss, finding gifts in garbage cans, washing clothes while showering, flushing the toilet only once a week, making their own toothpaste, not spending money on telephones, television or new clothes for their kids is just some of the ludicrous extents people go to to conserve their bank accounts. So I ask you. At what point does extreme frugality become near-dumpster-diving conditions? Just because you don’t throw something away and reuse it, for example toilet paper, is it still consi
Read more