Gordon Parks once says: “The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed”. Success is a miracle. It contains our own creative adventures; at the same time, creative adventures need one’s special efforts. It is to be expected that the definition of success differs from one person to another. However, the basic components of the pathways that lead to any success are so essential that one cannot do without them in life. Success in and by itself is a very abstract word as we can neither see nor touch it. Most of the time, it is difficult and inappropriate to use one’s own standard of success to measure another person’s level of success.
We all want to be successful. This can be assumed to be the common goal for almost everyone throughout life. Nobody’s life goal is to become a failure. When we are little, we may talk about becoming teachers and doctors, so that we may feel ourselves talented in our wish to nourish our next generations and help those who are sick. Then, when we grow to become teenagers and attend schools to receive a good education, our goals change to having good jobs with a good income. When we are parents, we talk about becoming good models for our children, so that they can learn good behaviors. When we are old, we brag about the achievements of our children to our neighbors, as if those achievements were ours. One can assume one common motivation behind all these wishes, namely the fact that we all want to be called successful by others.
Success becomes so important that we actually are working on it all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. Any work that we do in any period of time in our lives may be later attributed to parts of our successes. Moreover, one can be called successful only after one has tried, experienced, and fully achieved what one believes is really important. Sometimes, success can be considered as the achievement one’s life goal. A life goal is so called as such, because people spend their entire life trying to achieve it. Therefore, it is very important for one to understand and select the right pathway to achieve success in the first place. One’s life goal can only be reached through the path of education, communication, and opportunity.
Education is what guides us to think, to act, and to react in our lives, since it is also our fundamental resource that builds up our knowledge bases. Education helps us understand our thoughts and actions and why we are doing things in particular ways. For instance, psychology teaches us about how our brains functions are related to our behaviors. The process of learning psychology may lead to understanding ourselves better. English classes teach us how to write and prepare us for future jobs that require daily writings. Only if one were capable of basic education, one then could use the existing educational opportunities to create new possibilities, which leads one to success. On the other hand, for those who do not have an education, can they really achieve success? How long will it take for a farmer to understand the water potential concept in biology, if this farmer did not even know how to spell the word biology? Someone might say that the definition of success for a farmer is different from that for a biologist. But let us be realistic, is American society going to easily accept an uneducated farmer for a successful person in this twenty-first century? Without education, which provides a basic understanding of our lives, a coincidental success is not going to be accepted by most of the people. Moreover, intelligence is definitely needed for one to achieve success. Education and intelligence are closely interrelated and connected. Education helps us to discover and expand our already existing intelligence. This helps us to be prepared for any accidental opportunities that may occur at any time in our lives and guides us to take advantages of them. Sometimes, it is because of our intelligence that directs us to be a good student or good employee, that we are called educated people. While education molds our inner selves, our manners and temperaments that appear on the outside get better as well, which leave deep impressions to others. This leads to the next concept important in the definition of success, communication.
Communication is as important as education in our pathway to success. Let us think of someone who is a genius but only goes to home-school and does not make any friends, can this person achieve success, which is defined in terms of the admire and respect of others? A relationship that exists between oneself and others can help to expand one’s opinions and points of view and so can lead to understand other people’s ways of thinking. People need to have interactions with others in order to grow. This is shown helps to obtain more cultural knowledge and interpersonal education. To understand others as much as understanding one’s self is the key to achieve success. If one does not know what others’ needs are, and works things blindly, success will never favor one. By working with others, one learns about one’s own strength and weakness, and both are necessary steps towards one’s own success. Relationship is the foundation of communication, because communication expands the idea of relationship into existing not only from person to person, but from company to company, and society to society. On the other hand, the communication between you and your goal is as important as the relationship between you and all the people who can help you to reach your goal. Most importantly, only with the presence of relationship and communication, circumstance can occur as a form of opportunity. Circumstance can be described as a situation, a place, or even a time. But it does not matter how one defines it, a circumstance for you is when and where your path to success actually takes place. A circumstance functions like a stepping stone that eventually merges with a person’s goal; however, the occurrence of the circumstance needs the participation of opportunity.
Opportunity is not something that is out there, and everyone can grab it whenever one wants to; it is indeed something that takes effort to create. There are prerequisites for opportunity to be created: education and communication. Education not only prepares us for any circumstance that happens, but also gives us opportunity in the society. Only if you have a good degree from a sound educational place, you then have an opportunity to be accepted by those big, famous companies. Without a degree that can prove your education, you are most likely not going to have this opportunity. Also, because of your education you develop enough confidence. You then can represent yourself to others in any situation, such as at schools, workplaces, even those show stages in the shopping mall. Many of the singers and actors are actually discovered by circumstance, in the streets as it were, rather than in schools. Communication plays a similar role on the causation of opportunity. Once you have a relationship web, your friends might be able to introduce you to your friend’s friend, who then might be able to help you achieve to your life goals, which is success.
If all the achievements I have realized in my life so far can be seen as a boat, I would use the word success to describe my oar, which gets me power and allows me to go where I want. However, because I have not yet achieved the success, which is my life goal, my oars are not yet formed, and my boat is not yet ready to go. Therefore, more efforts are needed for me to achieve my success. Although hard work does not ensure my success in the future, success will not come to me without my efforts. Further more, I believe that a pathway that is composed of education, communication, and opportunity will be my bridge to success.
Life is full of surprises, like a box that contains many different types of candy, with us never knowing what we will get the next time. But we can choose when and how to get the candy next time. It does not matter how many times we try before we get the right flavor that we want. What really does matter is that we do not give up in the process. We are all born with unrealized potential. However, with education, communication, and opportunity, that prepare us to be ready for all different kinds of challenges at any time of our lives, as well as with helpful relationships, we all can strive to become rich and successful, realizing our life’s goal.
