If you compare 7-year-old me to me currently, there are many things that have changed. My appetite, the clothes I wear, and fortunately now I don’t believe that if you swallow a watermelon seed you'll grow a full blown watermelon in your stomach. Despite all these obvious changes, there is one thing that remained constant: my underlying lust for money. I come from a middle class family, but sometimes I feel like I’m constricted from doing things I want to do because of financial issues. I got the notion stuck in my head that money is my ticket to happiness, but if not that, at least being comfortable.

My friend recently asked me what my biggest fear was. I replied and said that I was very afraid of not being successful. Then I wondered what I meant by that. I made the two words, “wealthy” and “successful”, be synonymous with each other but for some reason it did not sit right with me to let it be so. I could easily have said, “being poor”, or “not making enough money”, but I used the word “successful”. Is success determined by how many digits you have in your salary, the level of your academia, or by the fewest number of times you stay up late wondering if what you are currently doing is what you want to do for the rest of your life?

I was thinking in my head how shallow I am that, in essence, I told my friend I was afraid that I won’t make a lot of money. I allowed money to be the biggest motivator in life. It is easy to say that the rookie hotshot on Wall Street who is making millions is very successful, but I don’t think that it is so simple. If that said fictitious businessman works on Wall Street compromises his integrity by stealing from his company to get ahead, he is then not labeled as successful but just a criminal.

One of my favorite books I’ve read this year was a memoir written by, Paul Kalanithi, a brilliant neurosurgeon and he wrote, “You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” As he wrote this memoir while undergoing the irreversible symptoms of terminal cancer, Kalanthi understood that the “striving”, or the struggle, is the real substance of success. He, who accomplished so much and was awarded prestigious titles, found out that success is not determined by if you meet your goal, or your own unique sense of “perfection”.

No, it is found when you are down on your knees making every last effort to keep on going. No matter what your goal is in life, simply achieving it is not enough to be considered successful. It appears that success is not a destination, but a journey. It is more than just being honest; it is about upholding and prioritizing your own set of beliefs while simultaneously achieving your goal.