Between a Rock and a Hard Place

     Does a fear of failure get in the way of success?o To answer such a thought provoking question as this, one must take into account the very meaning of the word success and enumerate the terms under which one attains it. Success can be defined by a multitude of different situations, but the one that most abruptly comes to mind is something I have mentioned, and will continue to mention, often--financial gain. Undoubtedly, one of the most routinely asked questions of someone pursuing an advanced education is, "What is the purpose for which you are attending college?" The most common answer being, "To make more money." But in the end, is that what all this is really about--money?

     Perhaps the most problematic feature of success, at least here in the United States, is that it remains most commonly equated with this figment of our imagination. Somewhere along the lines of the past century, our society has horribly depreciated the true value of education--knowledge. Instead, we have conditioned ourselves to the understanding that if we can make more money by putting in as little effort as possible, then it is okay to do so without any gain in knowledge; that ignorance, on account of convenience, somehow takes precedence over knowledge, as long as the substantial reward remains. But, success without knowledge, in my opinion, is failure in its most pristine form.

     For some, a fear of failure surely does block the path to success. However, others may fear success itself and perpetually separate themselves altogether from any means that may propel them towards it. In any case, one thing is certain: that to obtain true success, one must relinquish his or her self of any fears that might become inhibiting factors. To do so takes an ability to analytically discern the outcomes of many different life-altering choices; critical thinking, in other words--an ability most notably obtained through education.

     To those whose fears of failure prevent them from making the ultimate decision of whether to pursue a higher education or achieve their notion of success, however obscure it may seem, I say that fear is born of ignorance and suppression and the only way to overcome that fear is to free one's mind of it and take that first step into the unknown. As I have said before, all that is now known was once unknown.

     It is quite clear to me the true power these fears hold over people. Today, I sit here a product of both of the fore mentioned fears. In the summer of 2007, my former band and I moved to California to pursue the dream of rock stardom. Not surprisingly, the band is no longer together and they have all moved back to Ohio. Maybe they feared success; maybe failure. I know now that I feared both. Because of these fears, in the end we all failed. Fortunately, that failure sparked in me a need to advance myself. Now I am pursuing degrees in physics and political science. My point is that just because one may fail at certain things does not necessarily mean those failures will not open doors to other opportunities where one may succeed. Life is about learning from mistakes and failures, analyzing that knowledge and applying it in our future undertakings. Some say one has to fail before succeeding; that failure inevitably precedes success. Whatever the case may be, and however difficult the circumstances, one lesson has been made clear by philosopher Charles Baudouin: "If your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible."

Invest In Success

     Perhaps one of the most fascinating things about being Human is the great capacity for knowledge and understanding our brains possess. It is quite remarkable to think that the Human brain has so much storage capacity that researchers are at a loss to agree on even a best-guess-estimate. When all of the other processes our brains perform every second of our lives are taken into account, it seems that the answer to the question of processing and storage capacity very well could be nearly unlimited. To consider the fact that our brains conceived such a concept as monetary value strikes as rather intriguing. Instead of investing a combination of time and work beneficial to the whole of society based on the ideal that Unified we can advance toward the betterment of society, we have created a world in which we perpetually convince each other that the underlying factor that we must invest in order to achieve this notion of “success” is “money”—both veritable figments of our imagination. Almost everything we go to college for rests solely on the viewpoint that a college degree will somehow earn us more money and success.

     Success is measured almost exclusively by wealth, which sometimes is mistaken for logical, beneficial reasoning. We view money as if to assure ourselves that we can achieve a state of overall well-being. We have essentially conditioned ourselves to cherish money as the center of focus for just about every aspect of our lives. Caught in what can only be described as a “corporate spider web” of debt and deception that puts profit over people, we must Unite to free ourselves from the intertwinement with illogical thought that feeds these beasts of manipulation and deceitfulness. Although it seems a daunting task to completely overturn our current ways of life, the outcome of such unity will undoubtedly lead to a truly beneficial global society, marking the end of “separate societies” and signaling the beginning of “collective progression.”