I believe that the greatest accomplishment that I could achieve
in life is being comfortable being myself, as well as what everyone else was
saying, which is happiness. I think that
being comfortable and proud of who you are, is the greatest achievement that
you could ever gain in life. This is because, if you are proud of who you are,
then you will be happy, and good things happen to those who are optimistic. I’m
not saying that all good things happen to all good and happy people, that’s not
true; a lot of horrible things happen to very good people. But, if you are
happy, then you will realize that this one bad event should not define you or
your life. I think that if you are proud of who you are, this leads to a chain
reaction of positive things, which leads to a good life, and the only thing
that you are really going to care about when you are on your deathbed is not whether
of not you won that trophy in sixth grade, but whether or not you are proud of
who you were and what you did with your life. Because this accomplishment is
all based off of you, there would not be many ‘great lengths’ that you would
have to go to, in order to achieve this accomplishment. However, if someone
told you that if you cheated on this one test, you would get in to college and
be happy and have a lot of money; I would not do it. This is because in the end,
you would not be happy because your
whole life would be based off a lie and you could never be proud of who you
are/were. Lastly, I would not cross any moral boundaries to achieve this. This is
because, if you don’t stay true to your moral boundaries, then you will never
accomplish this goal/achievement in the long run. It isn’t about short term
happiness or short term acceptance of yourself, it’s about being happy and
proud of yourself overall.
Emilie, I agree with what you, and the others, are saying to some extent, however i don't necessarily believe that happiness is the greatest accomplishment that one can achieve, only because happiness is such a conditional term. To be truly happy all the time is a nearly impossible thing to achieve, and isn't at all practical. I mean if you are in a state of happiness that’s great, but if you are happy all the time than there really isn't "happiness" or sadness.
ReplyDeletePersonally, the greatest achievement in life to me is to be able to reach your goals and aspirations. Like in Macbeth, your goals may urge you to do some distasteful things. Macbeth wanted more power and in order to do that he needed to get rid of those who had more power than him. In life, there may be situations that provoke distasteful doings. For example, if your best friend and you wanted to go for a position in student government, you wouldn't not go for the position if your friend asked you not to. In this type of situation I think you should go for the position, but the way Macbeth went about it was wrong. Murder, solicitation, etc. would be considered (at least in my opinion) as going to far to reach a goal; it would be doing more harm than good. Like Emilie stated, one should be confident enough in oneself to strive for your goals without savage methods. But even confidence isn't something a person should strive for in life. Having doubts about oneself, fear, love, making mistakes are all qualities that display humanity, and separately may be pernicious but together can make someone stronger. We see this in Lady Macbeth, who is totally comfortable in her own skin and her actions in the beginning of the book, but we see now that even though she was confident in herself, her idea to murder Duncan made her troubled and unhappy in the end.
I think that happiness and achieving ones goals are equally good life accomplishments. I must say that I disagree with you about the feasibility of being happy all of the time. I agree that for most it's nearly impossible, but I don't think that it's any less possible than achieving ones personal goals all of the time (which almost never happens). Some people's personal goals are unsavory, like Macbeth's, as well. I don't think it would be great if someone accomplished their goal of vandalizing all of the paintings in the Louvre either. As for constant happiness causing a person to be devoid of emotion, I beg to differ. There have been times when I was happy for many months straight. During those times, not everything would always go perfectly, but when something went wrong, it was so easy to look at everything else that I had to be grateful for. I was very well aware that I was happy, and I knew that it was important to savor every minute because happiness is precious. Throughout my life, of course I haven't been happy every moment of every day, but I have been fortunate enough to have a taste of what constant happiness is like.
DeleteWhile, I agree that happiness is something I would like to achieve in life, I think the idea of happiness is too abstract for me to say it is the greatest accomplishment I could ever achieve in life. I agree with Manisha’s post, that happiness is conditional. I think that the greatest goal I could ever achieve in life would be to have no regrets. This is also a broad achievement but I think it can be defined and achieved more clearly. To me, living a life without regrets means taking all the chances you are given and working your hardest, knowing that you only have one life to live. In order to achieve this goal, I think one would have to work really hard. However when it comes to crossing moral or legal boundaries, I think that would contradict the goal itself. Everyone makes mistakes, and this is something one has to understand when trying to achieve this goal, but to cross moral of legal boundaries would go against the whole point of the goal in the first place and leave one with a lot of regrets. However I think, this achievement is a personal goal, something you can only achieve through your own actions, so there would never be any reason that one would have to cross these boundaries. But to answer the question, no I wouldn’t cross any moral or legal boundaries to achieve this goal. I personally do not think it is worth to ever cross moral or legal boundaries, even if it does mean achieving your greatest accomplishment.
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