My thoughts on success.

Lately I've been pondering a lot about what it means to succeed in life. Eventually, there were so many thoughts swirling around my brain that I needed to write them down. Here's what I came up with:
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Success. What a novel concept. People want to succeed. Most of us aren’t even sure what exactly we are trying to succeed at/for/in. But nonetheless, we must be successful. To many people nowadays, success is really nothing more than security: having plenty of money, a good family, a place to live, etc. It mainly revolves around money. (Everything does, these days.) When it all comes down to it, the general definition for success in America is money. People sacrifice much to reach this kind of success. For some people, the biggest thing offered to the money gods is their relationships with other people. See, when the almighty dollar has lured you in that far, you become addicted. You simply don’t have time for those bothersome things they call “relationships.” I know of a man who says he’s in love with a woman. And yet, he completely ignores her all for the sake of “success.” Surely that’s not right. I know another young man who has no time for people who don’t have as much “success” as he does. He has alienated all of his friends who do not share his love of “success.” Turns out, he has very few friends left. Surely that’s not right.
When I looked up success in the dictionary, one of the definitions WAS to obtain wealth. However, that wasn’t the first definition. In my opinion, that is the typical American definition of success- NOT what the word was originally intended to mean. The other definition is to achieve something you have worked for- something you want and find important. That sounds more like success to me. This kind of success is more like satisfaction and, ultimately, happiness: to know that you have achieved your goals, and obtained what really matters to you. To me, true success is about determining your priorities and working toward getting what you really want from life.
Apparently for some people, money ranks as their top priority. Greed, wealth, and the “American dream” are what drives them. To me, that’s quite a bleak way to live life. As I said, wealth is addicting. In most cases that I’ve seen, the wealth addict will become solely focused on their money, and weed out anything in their life that gets in the way of that. And wealth they shall obtain. But by the time they’ve reached a certain level of satisfaction (not that they’re ever really satisfied), they have no one to share it with, or no time to enjoy it. Somehow, that doesn’t really strike me as success. They say money can’t buy happiness. As a general rule, I would say this is true. And really, when it comes down to it, what is the point in such endeavors if your life isn’t happy?
Furthermore, people aren’t meant to be alone. The whole human race was set up around relationship. God wanted relationship, so He made us. He then decided that it was not good for man to be alone in this world, so He created a companion. There would be no need for any of us if relationship were not important.
I suppose those things are what I’d call success: relationship and happiness. Those are two things, among others, that have been universally fought for for centuries. Happiness is so important that our forefathers felt it necessary to include it in our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” (The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America). So, if you can live the life you feel is right, and, throughout, are able to be healthy, happy, and surrounded by the ones you love, you are, in my books at least, a success.