I have a friend that I love to argue with who is constantly asking me this question and I never understood why. I suppose I should mention that this would always come up after we’ve been drinking for hours and start to get into the everlasting conversations of what we expected out of life. As I was walking into my home today I was appreciating being able to come home from work and just like my house key turning in the lock something clicked! Up until now I never knew what my version of success was. I always thought I knew what would make me feel successful but I was never able to actually explain it in a way where I felt I had it actually figured out. I think that is what my friend was picking up on all this time and I just never knew it. How annoying that must have been for him.
Success I believe pertains to the type of person that you are. Without taking that into consideration I allowed myself to take in other peoples ideas of success distort my perception of the idea. Because that is all I feel success is, an idea. A person who aspires to become a millionaire and a person who becomes a school teacher are both successes if that is where they want to go with their life.
I am naturally a caring person. I love to help others, to give, to live life all that good stuff. Being caring to other people is fun to me because of how it makes me feel. Taking that into consideration I don’t think it would be wise for me to measure my life by how much money I make or how many people I can get to like me. I am not ambitious in those areas of life. I know people who just love to compete and others who love to debate but those areas don’t interest me either. I am sure all of these people can tell you their version of success and it wouldn’t be the same. What gets me up in the morning isn’t what gets them up in the morning, we have different standards and ideas of what we would want our ideal days to be like. Everyday is an adventure to me maybe not a fun one but an adventure nonetheless. I work very hard at everything I do and I am proud of the knowledge I have acquired this far in my life. None of the happiness I have has ever came from how much money I had or a single individual. My happiness has always comes from the satisfaction I get from doing the things I know I love to do in life.
In that short walk from my car up to the apartment I was able to realize, I am successful. I have a job I like going to, I am surrounded by people who love me, and I am capable of providing for myself. This is what makes me happy, this is what success looks like for me. I am not saying that I wouldn’t love a million dollars! I am just saying that even if i never get rich, if I never get famous, if my name doesn’t go down in history, I did my best to do good to the people around me and right now I think my life is reflecting that. There will always be bad days but a bad day can still be part of a great year.
