- Our lives are filled with successes and failures. But we seem to only see the failures as tragedies, but can success be considered tragic too?
Our society pushes us to go for our dreams and goals. It almost thinks that people with lots of work ethic and talent will rule while the rest sit at the bottom or a meritocracy. This idea is kind of true and that is a scary thought. What if you sit on the bottom? How do you feel about yourself? People in our society worship themselves, a very selfish thing to do. And you aren’t just worshiping yourself, you are envying another. And you never envy a person so out of reach as much as the people you are closer to. With this mentality, you continue to push yourself to step it up; exactly what our society wants us to do. The crueler the environment, the more motivated we are to get what we want done. Our society is so focused on pushing ourselves, we forget to really take in and live life.
I know you are wondering how successes can be seen as failures. But what if you found out what you thought you wanted turns out not being what you really wanted? I don’t think people really see this point because our society blinds us with their ideas of success. We are taught these ideas from a young age and don’t discover that these ideas might not be what we actually want until too late. There is where success can be considered a tragedy; why have everything society wants you to have but at the cost of your happiness?
But of course we fear failure too, just not the same way. We fear failure because we think that others will judge us based on our failures. As humans, we take things really personally and take people’s judgment of us can really shape what we think of ourselves and what decisions we will make. That is why we think certain goals is worthwhile; we know that we will be judged less by others when we take the path society wants us to do. Isn’t that tragic?
I think that we need to realize that both success and failure can be tragic and tragedy is part of our lives no matter your circumstances. No one can be successful in everything and no one can be a failure in everything. Everyone has their strengths and weakness that is just life.
These thoughts came to me after watching the TED talk called “A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success” by Alain de Botton.