We cling like Victorians to the idea of public virtue. We must satisfy society first and attain a high status, but we don't cope. We cannot bear the emotional turmoil and PTSD that follows our success. Where is the balance between public and private virtue?

We, as honor students, worry about our public virtue, our reputation from the moment we are told in elementary school that we are gifted and subsequently placement in advanced middle school classes. Differentiated from the rest of our classmates, we begin to mold ourselves into a societally formed identity, mapped out by a predetermined CV that we may not want our names printed on.

I'm not saying I do not seek Western success or that I loathe my societally defined identity and status as a “promising student.” In fact, it’s the opposite: I demand a certain amount of material goods and safety. The only way I can obtain these things and feel contented is to play the system’s game. I need access to the new basic necessities we have made for ourselves: an up-to-code residence equipped with indoor plumbing, running water, heating and cooling, and electricity, plus money to buy food and toiletries. The only way to get these “raw materials” is by having money; this is the new bartering system. So, we must follow the system, the amorphous “they,” and their rules.

Once they see potential, they try to help us by stressing us out and making us perform to their demands—demands not set by us as individuals, but by the elite, those in charge. They see a cog in us all, especially those afforded the title of “advanced,” as perpetuating their society. Their society that simply sees achievements on a CV. Their society that ignores the individual, with all his or her emotional and physical needs, behind said paper.

I, by playing into this system and trying to please the inner demon always telling me I am not good enough, have disregarded and neglected my emotional health to such a degree as to fatally injure my heart. As I sit here trying to understand why I have a crush on this guy from my summer class, I don't understand what to do. I don't understand why or why now. Of all things, I don't think about it as being magical, I initially see it a hindrance to my senior year studies. But that is the demon talking. That’s the voices in my head saying I'm not worthy of anything. Is it, though? I couldn't live with myself if I had to choose a relationship over my social climbing, and I hate myself for that reason.

I hate that I see material success as being of more importance than love and having "fun." I don’t know who I have become. The sadomasochist in me wants me to fill out all those slots on this figurative CV in the hands of a flawed society. I did everything I was supposed to do—take advanced/honors classes in middle and high school, take AP classes, graduate early, jumpstart college education, join said college’s honors college, get into Phi Kappa Phi, etc. I was filed into the upper echelon, and I consider my “success” an achievement. Indeed, I could not physically live with myself if I underperformed. Is this love just a part of the test? No, it can’t be. I’m becoming obsessed with my public virtue.

I’m at the endpoint of a ray and my destination goes on forever in the positive right direction. Look at this one-way road. You're on it too. Options other than extending forever in a single direction (either to the positive right or negative left) seem improbable. Being stuck on this one-way road, this singularly linear progression forward limits your options and plagues your consciousness with a kind of plastic-bag-over-your-head stress.

And yet you and I are not one point amongst the infinite number of points that make up a line, a road, a straight path to an undetermined somewhere.

I don't want to be that, but I must. My demons inside will win. This crush is bound to evaporate, right? I mean, he can't love me. I will continue on my straight progression forward to the right (not the left negative side since society deems me otherwise). I can't challenge the system. I can't say no to my own desire to be a societally successful person with impeccable public virtue because I couldn't live with myself. That’s the way it is.

But...what if we're at the epicenter of a giant circle—we just have to draw a radius to one of its infinite points, and there will be our happiness. I don't know. You can't know which geometric object you ride on in this universe.

No, we're at the endpoint of the ray (which is also the start of it, mind you), the first point. Even though our future seems to be laid out before us in an infinite, linear fashion, we are all reluctant to begin our forward progression. It’s so neatly planned out by society, but that’s just not good enough. Our CVs are almost filled up…we're packaged and ready to be propelled forward into a positive infinity as soon as we graduate next spring. Although that satisfies the materialistic demons inside us, it does not satisfy our beings, but we know we'll do it anyways. Perhaps what we need is to think of ourselves and our road to success as not being so much a road, but a circular path:

Stand on the edge of a continuous circle, and the movement always leads back to you. See point P. You are that point. The revolutions close on you, continuing on one end and stopping at you. Go counter-clockwise, against society, or go clockwise and take a tangent, get on that mathematical ray to that linear road. You decide.

You have the choice to define your own success. You have the choice to continue on with what society has deemed you worthy of pursuing. But, there's that option. The road to success doesn’t have to be linear.