<p>“My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that’s nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.” - Helen Hayes</p>
<p>Assignment: Do people spend too much time trying to please others rather than reaching their own standards? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experiences or observations.</p>
<pre><code> It would be impossible for me to answer this question directly because my perspective of the world in which I live is severely limited, and I must not speak for the population as a whole (i.e. assuming that by “people” the statement refers to the majority of society).
Instead of making obscene supercilious conjecture about people living today, I have decided to establish a firm foundation for people throughout time and how people have always aligned and constructed themselves throughout the development of humankind. Developed standards should never be compromised by a temporary anachronistic Ideal that proves justified in the current circumstance but does not simmer in concord with a longitudinal study. In order for the assignments statement to have a negative effect on the body, we must assume that the pending ethos of modern personages is indeed when they spend time exerting the obsequious they are in turn disregarding their notion of decent conduct. Because it is not indubitably inconceivable for achievement to align with success or vise versa, must it be one or the other? Before I proceed, it is necessary for me to define just what we mean by “A persons standards”. I define it to be a particular set of ambiguous ideals that one has developed over a lifetime of experience and expects to filter each cosmological moment through his standard-strainer to decide how he should act. In other words, its his logic attached to predisposed previous resolutions. He predicts that following these sets of predetermined beliefs will issue the maximum amount of benefit and enjoyment from his life. Your standard is not to be confused with the law of human nature or moral code that is inherent in all humans from birth. Your standard always contains the moral code of human nature, but different people imbue their self-observed habit with different levels of this gift. (A real habit may, or may not, truthfully exist in the real world. Whats important is what they perceive to exist because this is what eventually effects their empirical real-life actions.)
Four things can occur in terms of denouement. One, your standard is not followed, but ends up ironically not being the best. Two, your standard was again not followed, but it sadly ends up that it was the best solution. Three, in the positive, you followed your standard, but it ends up not being the best. Four, the most common case, otherwise a standard would not be a standard, again in the positive, the standard was followed and it turned out to be the best. When a certain man pardons with his standards to fawn, we must focus on the former two negative examples.
First of all, from case number one, you decide to carry through a matter using an unjustified illogical procedure that hitherto goes against your previous standard. Contradictorily, you succeed in both categories; you realize that your standard was too standard and therefore not compatible to that segment of time. Your standard is then adjusted for future events or you decide that this particularly scenario was a fluke in your system and deserves its own special exception. This case is strongly evident in fairy tales, the idea of following your visceral response rather than logical. It is also partially true that there is logical proof behind your visceral response, but not always, and for the majority of circumstances, it is normally beneficial to weight your logic before the visceral, but still take it into account. Note: visceral can be substituted with gut feeling. A case that displays the defenestration of both visceral inklings and personal standards for the sake of ephemeral pleasure takes place in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne was a young girl who grew up in a very conservative environment where she was taught the Scriptures daily and the sins of mankind. She was later married to a brilliant doctor whom she did not love, in a small Puritan town. After matrimony, the doctor left her on a business venture in the forest and was captured by Indians. Hester soon grew restless and setting aside her standards made the decision to sleep with another man. This led to a tragic down fall once she conceived a child and the word spread. The Puritan citizens raged over this crime and punished her by forcing her to bare the scarlet letter A, upon her chest in ignominy. This tormented Hesters soul to carry such a burden without hope of forgiveness from her peers. Although she was contrite for her sin, she was given a wonderful child she named Pearl, a girl whom Hester would most certainly travel back in time to commit the same crime over in order to save Pearls life. This is a dramatic example, where the standard was not necessarily flawed but rather disobeying, lead to an unintended miraculous result.
The second example is when your standard really was the best solution and would have benefited you the most. This is the most common case because normally your standard is well supported by a lifetime of experience and learning and it is not easily contradicted and changed. This notion can be perceived by using a personal anecdote from my juvenescence. Most children at the age of 6 live for nothing more than to appease their parents and appear laudable in their fathers eyes. I started from age 6 assembling a premature standard that was always the complete antithesis of my parents desires, just for the sake of competition/ dominance. For example, if my parents told me eating cookies for breakfast was unhealthy, and I was not to do it, I would readily take the opposite view and change my standard to surreptitiously eat tons of chocolate chip cookies in the AM. Then I would rationalize it to myself by saying “Well, exactly what are the ingredients in this delicious bite?” “Flour, water, eggs, sugar, and chocolate” "Well, if flour is made from grain, which is made from wheat, which is a vegetable, which is healthy right? “Carry on”. As time went on, I got fatigued, constipated and so on. In this case, I was able to a please my parents by using my secretive nature and I pardoned with my standard of health by using irrational arguments to justify my actions on the outside, but on the inside I knew what I was doing was wrong. All just for the sake of opposition. This is only one petty example of the dangers of thwarting your standard. A second example of this danger can be seen in the political realm, with Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who was not just some average citizen; he has the credentials of being elected by the president to look after the entire nations health. For years he tried to stick warning labels on cigarette boxes and for years he could not get the law to pass because of the extreme power the tobacco lobbyists had in legislation. This is a prime example of politicians casting out their standards for the sake of fawning the lobbyists for wealth.
I do not know if this Idea of forfeiting your standards for the sake of fawning is prominent in the nation as a whole. I do know, that following your developed standard rather then a selfish, rash whim is more likely to lead to your benefit in the long run. More specifically trust your developing instinct with notice that it may need to be adjusted as you make mistakes, and prove part of your standard wrong.
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