Success

The American Dream these days seems to be focused around the concept of success. Whether is involves a dream car, or ridiculous amounts of money, everybody had an idea of what success means to them. This seems to cause a great deal of stress and emotion discomfort. There are even motivational speakers that claim to give out the “secrets of success”. But I know better. I know that being successful isn’t about working hard or pushing yourself to new heights. That sort of thing requires much more time, effort, and though than is truly necessary. If you want to truly be a success, all you need to do, is lower your standards.

Stop wasting your time dreaming about how much money you will make when you are older, or whether you will have a good job, or go to a good school or any of these pointless pursuits. Focus on finding the success that already exists. Who cares about getting married, if you want to find someone the care about, to spend your life with, get a turtle. They are much cheaper, quieter, less demanding, and they have no problem living with your parents! This brings me to my next point, life with your parents! Why spend the time and effort struggling to find a job so you can afford a house of your own, when you live in one that’s perfectly fine right now? As far as I’m concerned, living the dream means never moving out of your bedroom. This all-inclusive package comes fully equipped including: it’s completely furnished, the shelves are refrigerator are constantly stocked, and if you’re lucky, you might even get a fully-functional laundry service.

The point is, don’t waste your time worrying about your future success, it’s easy and it requires very little thought or effort. Once you’re able to find the success in your everyday life, a lifetime of relaxation and happiness awaits you.

For example, I wake up in the morning, and if in my half-consciousness, I am able to find matching socks, BAM success. Its little things like that, that prove to me I am on the road to greatness. If that one doesn’t work for you, there are plenty of other options; maybe you found a new way to put off doing something important. That’s a great feeling! Procrastination to me is a timeless art form, often under-utilized, and constantly under-appreciated. As Eleanor Roosevelt (or someone along those lines) put so eloquently, “why do today what you can do tomorrow?” Brilliant. This simple rule creates opportunities for success on a daily basis.

It’s simple, if you want to be happy and successful; all you have to do is make it easier for yourself. Find small success, little things that truly make all the difference in the world.

J. Walker Glascock

Premier

As this is the maiden voyage of this column I really wanted to make sure to do it right. I started rummaging through the archives in my brain; there are just so many spectacular words of wisdom back there that it was just about impossible to find where to start. I even asked for some advice. My ex-girlfriend suggested that I could write a terrific article about “how to lose a girl in 10 days” because “how to keep a girl for over 10 days was obviously out of the question”. I’m still not quite sure what she was getting at there…

Anyway, through a bizarre series of events I got to thinking about soap; more specifically, hotel soap. I was wondering, why do they give out that entire bar of soap to each customer? They give out nice compact bottles of shampoo, but a full bar of soap. Do they really think a single person can use up an entire bar of soap in one weekend? I actually think about this fairly regularly.

Whenever I travel I take it as a personal challenge to attempt to use the entire bar. I’m always cleanest on vacation because I shower constantly and I always make sure to take the time to soap myself thoroughly, multiple times. Of course I never use it all the way (I believe that’s impossible). Which makes me wonder, what do they do with the soap people leave behind? Do they throw it all away? If so that seems to be a tremendous waste of soap. Maybe they sterilize it and melt it down to create new bars. But can you sterilize soap? If they do I wonder what they use; and why don’t we use that to clean ourselves in the first place?

The entire hotel soap extravaganza is an enigma to me. Obviously they have some incredibly intelligent individuals working behind the scenes, making sure the whole operation is successful, and I want to know who they are. Because those are the people we should have solving the problem of world hunger.

This all might seem a little trivial to some, however I know that it’s this type of thinking that truly should be much more abundant in this day and age. If more people would spend good quality time pondering these deep, penetrating thoughts, the entire planet would be a much better place. There would be no more anger, jealously, leprosy, or just generic hubris; any of the problems that are ripping our world apart.

So these are my words of wisdom; take the time to ponder, reflect, eventually maybe even discuss, the types of things that truly matter. Some good times for this might be; during class, athletic practices, even Wednesday evening church services-as long as the pondering is brief and preferably spiritually related. Just take the time.

J. Walker Glascock