A very good friend of mine recently invited me to attend a Shabbat service and dinner at the Miami University Hillel. I will be honest with you in the fact that I have spent the past 20 years of my life at the same church. I love my church, but 20 years of attending the same church does not give me a diverse religious experience.
Naturally in college one must embrace the diversity of life and experience new things and different cultures, so I was really excited about going to the service and trying to understand a new belief that I have never heard, seen or witnessed before.
I found the service to be really fascinating, but what I loved was the derasha, or sermon, the Rabbi gave. I have never been entranced by a 10-minute discussion before but she delivered an absolutely beautiful homily. It might have been the fact that my mind had been on the topic in recent weeks, but I found the subject matter she was discussing to be enthralling.
The rabbi went into a discussion about the definition of success and how that translates into our every day lives. I have been struggling with the definition of success in recent months. Do I define myself by my grade point average (GPA)? What about my extra-curricular activities? Do I define myself by my resume or how amazingly good I look in a suit? (And just so you are aware I didn't just write that for my own sake, several friends of mine agree so I am not totally egocentric!) The truth is I honestly don't know how I am supposed to measure my success.
I was once talking with an anthropology professor and he told me he thought Miami students had an identity crisis, because I was asking him about the difference between an A and an A-. I feel society requires me to want an A not an A- because, like it or not, there is a difference. I want to go to law school. Not a good law school but a great law school. In order for me to get into a great law school I have to have a top GPA and phenomenal extracurriculars and everything else. It is a serious amount of pressure we place on students today.
The reason I loved the derasha was because she reminded me of what success should mean to me. Why on earth should I let my success be interpreted and defined by another person or even society? When did they get to control my happiness and my purpose or meaning of life? The rabbi reminded me that success is how I define it; my success represents what I deem to be valuable or important in my life.
So, what is success? The American Heritage College Dictionary defines it as, "the achievement of something desired, planned or attempted." However, that barely scratches the surface of what it really is. I can only tell you Matt Chacey's definition of success is not going to be yours. For example, one component of my success is to be in the company of people I love and enjoy every minute of our time together. I want to laugh more then I pout and I want to experience life and all its possibility. So the question that comes from this is, what does success mean to you?
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