The Blogger SAT Challenge

It is not an easy challenge to determine whether success is measured by accomplishment or the struggles one has gone through. This is because there are a variety of perspectives on this issue, and each one will bring a unique viewpoint to the table. While I believe that it is important to recognize struggle, I believe that accomplishment is still the better measure of the success of one's life.

Struggle is, at its best, an ambiuous term that can be bandied around. I don't try to deny that my life has had very little struggle. I started high on the social ladder and then continued to go up. However, I believe it is misleading to say that struggle is the ultimate gauge of success in ones life because different people struggle against different things. To be born in the ghettos and into a world so hellish that it is beyond the average person's ability to comprehend is a struggle. Does that make a person successful? Not at all. Instead, it is how one meets those challenges and the adversity that they encounter and how they overcome them that ultimately will determine their success.

The actual struggles themselves are instead accomplishments of a sort. In a world where drugs are rampant and violence can affect even the most detached and remote of people, there is a struggle to stay calm. In a world where terrorism perpetuates itself and is promulgated as the greatest threat to freedom and democracy by a government that insists that we are over the edge of a paradigm shift in how the world works together and stands up for what is right, struggle is a common thing. To come out of struggle, bruised and hurt but victorious, however, that is accomplishment. To deal with problems that you encounter by engaging them is a struggle, but at the same time by making a difference you have an accomplishment.

There is a reason why accomplishments are heralded as a marker of success by so many, and that is because they are typically a sign of triumph of a person's will. There is a need to properly define what constitutes an accomplishment if you want to use it as a gauge of success in place of the struggles of a person. It is not an accomplishment for someone who doesn't have to overcome adversity to achieve something that a normal person could not. Paris Hilton did not have an accomplishment in making a music new album. There was no adversity for her to overcome, no test of will for her to pass. Instead, her money and her status brought all of the things she needed to her, and in the end her performance was barely mediocre for it. Instead, look at the people who make a real influence upon society. Look to the people who combat gangs and drugs by reaching out to their community. Their struggles go unpraised, as every success they have is someone we never read about committing a crime or overdosing on drugs or falling into any of the pitfalls of our society. But they have accomplishments as they have struggled against the forces of the world and succeeded where few are willing to go.

Struggle isn't something that everybody can face to the same degree. Our lives are constantly interweaving and no two people experience the exact same things. Our struggles will all be different, but what is important is not the struggles that we face in life, but instead how we overcome them. And when we look back at what we have done and the adversity we have faced, and see the accomplishments we have made, then we truly know the value of our lives through the success we have accomplished.

Show the score given by the expert grader

Rate another random entry