Have you ever sat in your room and thought to yourself, “what is the meaning of success?'” If you were to ask most people, they would say success is happiness. That statement is a bit of a cliche and leaves us confused about what to do to achieve success. We live in a society where success is measured by how much money you make, which pressures us to take careers that earn a high payroll. For example, most students nowadays only strive for this one thing, which is an A in all their classes. Students would study for 5 hours for a test, forgot all the material after the test, and gain nothing but a simple dumb letter on their report card. Even worse a student may get a B or below for their grade, which causes the student to feel like a complete failure. Where is the learning or personal growth in this? This kind of sacrifice and commitment to doing something you don’t like, will lead to cheating in school, and possibly a miserable life of no self-expression. Instead, we should climb the ladder towards our goals, fall down, and come back stronger.

“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” – Sumner Redstone

During quarantine, I got sick of just doing nothing in my room, so I bought a bass. This legendary rhythm instrument keeps me excited in boring times, and keeps me rolling throughout my day. I am trying to get a lot of money by being a doctor, or some kind of scientist, but in reality I find joy in making music. Music is where I put my sacrifice, commitment, and self-expression into. Playing bass can be frustrating, and can take a long time to find success in. At first I couldn’t fret or pluck the strings consistently. I failed many times early, and got mad at my bass. Eventually I started the improve my technique, and noticed personal growth. This eventual personal growth brings us closer to success, and fulfills our selves. Like school cheating and stealing in music will cause more harm than good. Stealing or plagiarism in music will lead to future problems, like lawsuits for copyright, and can ruin someone’s reputation. Whenever I finish lyrics for a song, that ended up sounding like another song , I would feel discouraged. If you cheat your ways towards your goals, you will not grow as a person.

At the end of the day, success requires sacrifice towards something you have a passion for. Success should be measured differently for everybody, and should not be decided by what society think success is. Success can be learning guitar for someone. For someone else, it can be owning an ice cream shop. For another person, it could be owning a business that makes a lot of money. As long as you love what you do, create goals, and work closer towards it, you will be successful.