I want to feel alive. I want to feel beauty in my heart. I want to feel connected. I want my existence to transcend the people I touch. I want my love for everything to blossom such as a hibiscus flower blossoms during a cool morning’s sunrise. Most importantly, I want to be SUCCESSFUL.

Society has done a good job of inhibiting our emotions and instincts by teaching us how to be successful. Success in a socialized aspect is defined as working your life to accumulate wealth and and a family – at any cost. We aren’t taught how to experience life the way God intended. Wealth, gathering of materials, who you know, how much of that matters when you die? We all die, and likely we all die alone. This is a fact that most people simply cannot understand. You will die, uncontrollably. Most people don’t understand how drastically different their life and philosophies may be 40 years down the road. I can’t think of many that would ever admit to wanting to look back on their life and wonder where it all went, and what it was all worth.

We all start out living our lives as if we are eternal beings. We have no expiration date. Then we grow into a sense that we at some point die, maybe at 70, 80, 90, whatever. What is often refused to be accepted is that our life can be extinguished at any point. You may be able to agree with that, but it is unlikely that you live that way. Of course you CAN die at any time, but you won’t. You won’t die until you are ready. That is what in my heart I at one time believed – even in the face of the realization and acceptance that I COULD die at some random time, even in the near future.

I don’t plan on dying, nor do I intend to die anytime in the near future, but I realize that I will die, and I have absolutely no idea when it is going to happen. The point is, I don’t want to die and have had my life exist in vain. I don’t want to die where my only mark left on the world is how much wealth and items were to be distributed to my successors and how many false relationships I have accumulated in the name of vanity. I also don’t want to live my life achieving something society has defined as success, to only look back twenty years and realize that my life has been relatively uneventful and pointless.

My drive is to live my life as I deem successful. Wealth and social status is superficial, and will be forgotten as soon as I’m gone. What is important to me is who loved me, who I loved, and who will remember me for what reasons. It is our humanistic obligation to live our life to the fullest according to our love and passion. There is a sharp disconnect in what the human soul needs to be happy and what socialization has defined what it takes for every human to be happy. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. There is no one single path that equally makes every person happy. And with the way we are socialized we all start on the same path with the same goal in mind and for most of us it’s too late by the time we realize that that isn’t the path to happiness.

I think a lot of people live their entire life striving to reach a goal that has been fed to them by the media and they either reach that goal and realize that isn’t what makes them happy, or they still feel empty because they missed out on life while attempting to pursue what they believed was going to make them happy. There is an equilibrium that can be reached, and that is something we aren’t taught. We are left to our own devices to realize this.

To me success is just that, to be able to realize your full potential in the thing you have the most passion for. In fact, it is often considered to be one of the habits of highly successful people. People whom begin their journey doing something they love and are passionate about, and wealth happens to be a side-effect of this pursuit. At any rate, success is subjective and I no longer consider myself successful unless I am living my life doing the things that absolutely make me happy. I used to think living my life this way was irresponsible, but now, nearing 30, I am content with the fact that I have lived my life the way I have. I am not an empty shell striving to fulfill a destiny that has been laid out in a cookie-cutter fashion. I intend for my own reflection of my life when I am nearing death to be something that contains absolutely no regrets. I want to live, not necessarily every day, but every month as if I was going to die. I don’t want to build false relationships, nor do I want to be involved with anyone with that intention. The only things I want from a relationship with another person is truth and forthrightness.