Slightly weird question but I'm kinda panicking and you're one of the most accomplished people I know who looks like what they're doing. What does success mean? Like, what's one supposed to do in life? Have a good career and get married?
Okay, here’s the deal.
By most metrics, I’m an extremely ‘successful’ person. I was valedictorian; I’m going to an Ivy League school, studying one of the most difficult subjects there is. I’m working two jobs, and am a co-author in an upcoming biochemical paper to be published in major journals. I was even a model and a beauty queen for a while.
But you know why I’m doing any of this?
Because my parents and grandparents couldn’t get as good of an education, because they were poor or because they couldn’t speak English. Because my entire life I’ve been told that there’s someone who’s better than I am, so I have to work harder than them. Because I’ve been taught to see life as a competition.
and it is fucking exhausting.
There is a huge difference between what makes someone ‘successful’ and what you’re supposed to do in life.
You’re supposed to make friends. Supposed to break a few hearts, and have your own broken a few times (if that’s your thing). Supposed to stay up late because there’s a book you can’t put down. Supposed to think ‘what would make me happy right now?’ and do it. Supposed to eat too much junk food and promise yourself you’ll go for a run to work it off and never do it. Supposed to pet every dog you see and look ridiculous trying to befriend cats.
You can’t treat life as a competition where people are divided into the winners, the exceptional, the ‘successful’ and the rest. Because I do that every day, and every time I feel like someone is better than me in any context, I get so envious and angry that it burns.
I’m smart. I’m successful. Sometimes all this makes me happy.
But what makes me really happy is sitting in the sunshine. Meowing at my cat, and smiling when he meows back. Tending to my lime tree, scurvy. Talking to my sister. Going to church.
If you want to be ‘successful’, by normal standards, you can try to do what I did, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it.
Because even right now, I’ve got a zoom meeting open, with professors telling me what I have to do to graduate with engineering honors. Because every day I write out a list of my work, and it’s longer than my forearm, and I feel bad for sleeping if I haven’t checked off every box.
You should have a good career, if just to survive, but you can’t base your entire life around what the world tells you will make you successful. Don’t you dare become a cookie cutter-perfect shape.
You can’t define what makes you successful by someone else’s contexts. Because I’ve reached and reached and surpassed every single bench mark by a mile, and I’m still reaching. If you let someone else decide what you do, what finally makes you that illusive ‘successful’, you’ll never have a moment of rest. Never have a second of contentment.
I’ve lived with the pressure of get-a-degree-get-a-job-buy-a-house-marry-have-two-point-five-kids, so I won’t tell you that you don’t have to have a job or work hard just to survive, because you do. Because now we live in a sink-or-swim world. But I’ve been churning water my entire life, and I’m here to tell you that it’s alright to just… float.
So, yes. Have a good career, and get that piercing you’ve always wanted.
Get a degree, and find the best friends you’ll ever have along the way.
Get married (if you want), and never stop joking and laughing with your partner.
Do well, and go as far as you want to, but stop. Take a break to lay in the grass and play with your dog.
I know things are scary. I know it seems like you have to be at 100% all the time, but that’s a lie, and it’s one I’m working very hard to unlearn.
Because all those things are the goals, and if you only focus on them, you’ll miss every strawberry milkshake and midnight adventure and terrible joke along the way.
Stop. Rest. Keep trying.
Because I promise the world won’t fall apart while you take a moment to breathe.
