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Printer-Friendly ModeRight rationale leads to fulfilling life
December 6, 2010 —
Why are you at this university? Why do you choose to spend your time and money on getting a higher education instead of some other part of your life? If you’re like me, then you continued your education because it was the next logical step. A continuously increasing number of jobs require degrees now on account of the American ideal that everyone should have access to higher education. Everyone wants a job, so people go to universities, for their own reasons or for others’ reasons.
But the graduation rate of SVSU attests to two things. It means that people are either coming here for the wrong reasons and only realizing it later, or that people aren’t committed enough to the reason that originally brought them here. Luckily for me, I found my reason after I was already here. It could have just as easily gone the other way where I would have found myself pursuing something I didn’t really want to because I blindly followed the advice of someone older than me. On the other side, there are people who came here to pursue a specific goal and only later decided that it wasn’t worth the time or effort.
If you’ve seen Fight Club and remember Raymond the store clerk, there’s an example of someone not being committed enough. But faced with life or death, a person can make almost anything possible, including graduating from a university. The reasons that someone uses to justify not graduating suddenly become moot. It doesn’t matter whether the classes were too hard or whether he didn’t have enough money or whether he didn’t have a car. Despite this, he’ll find a way because just about everyone will choose life over death.
The real tragedy is that people don’t see how the decision to not follow through on something you really want is a decision of life or death. The worst thing is not failure. You learn more about yourself from failure than from success.
The worst thing is to regret not doing something, to look back on your life and realize that you were never truly alive.
Going after what you really want despite the obstacles is intrinsically rewarding and will also lead to a better life. The opposite, unfortunately, is far too common. Too many people don’t see understand Tyler Durden’s threat of death if we don’t fulfill our dreams is upon all of us. Nobody is going to come to your house and shoot you if you don’t stay committed to what you want. You essentially shoot yourself if you settle for the lesser life, which deep down, you know you don’t really want.