u/EmptyJump2245

I saw this post on twitter and it had me thinking about how we define “success.”

Back in high school, I had a chemistry teacher who is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. This man never brought a textbook to class, never used notes, nothing. Everything he taught came straight from his head. You could ask him anything, even outside the topic or syllabus, and he’d still answer properly. We all respected him, he truly understood his stuff.

One day, I jokingly asked him, why he was still teaching at a high school when he could easily be a lecturer or working somewhere making way more money. Then he told me he had actually received those kinds of offers before, multiple times.

But then there was something he said that stuck with me. He said his heart has always been in teaching. Like that’s what he’s always wanted to do. He just decided one day and stuck with it his whole life. And that he’s genuinely happy where he is. He even said he’d be okay dying as a teacher. That really stuck with me cause I’ve seen people give up their passion just to chase more money and end up being miserable. Even people in his line of work cause their original passions didn’t work out.

Everywhere you look now, especially on social media, success feels very narrowly defined, making 6 figures , having luxury houses. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with those things.

But it did raise a question in me, what if success is just doing what actually fulfills you, even if it doesn’t look impressive to everyone else?

For some, just having a house, a big car and a farm for seeing with the family weekends or what we call “The Zambian dream”, will be just as fulfilling to them. Are we going to call them unambitious or just content?

I’m still trying to figure things out myself, but that conversation made me question a lot of the default paths people follow.

Does anyone else see life this way?