When was the last time somebody asked you this simple question?
We live in a status driven society. Hectic cities full of strangers running around impatiently, trying to catch up with their goals and aspirations. Your worth is now defined by your ''success'', which is supposedly defined by your job, but actually it all comes down to your wallet. If you seem to have funds, then everything's okay. Society approves. But even if that's the case, nobody wonders if you're truly happy. It's not even about gathering resources in order to achieve happiness anymore; it's just about gathering resources.
''No, but at least I'm successful. Look at all those happy idiots with no money...''
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Growing up in this world you're constantly reminded of everyone's expectations of you. You need to be ''successful'' in order to be accepted. You need to achieve this, then be this , then do that and then go there in order to make everyone proud. Just being yourself and helping the world isn't enough. Just being a normal, kind and benevolent person isn't enough. You're barely ever asked if you're truly happy like it doesn't even matter. Are you smart? Are you strong? Are you rich? Are you beautiful?That's what counts and that's what the world is expecting from you. Nobody is truly expecting you to be happy.
Even people that love you and have been supporting you all along need you to be successful. It's like some sort of a secret condition even in cases of unconditional love. Your parents do love you more than life but they also perceive you as a younger version of themselves and therefore try to push you to be as ''successful'' as they couldn't be themselves. Not judging, it's only natural if parents feel this way and want their progeny to surpass their own accomplishments, however this adds a lot of unwanted pressure and anxiety to a young kid's early years or a teenager's social acclimatization. As a result, relationships between parents and kids are ruined and nobody's ever happy again, regardless of how successful anyone might be.
"All conflict stems from the unwillingness of humans to see the world through the other's eyes.''
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Life looks like a competition between total strangers who would step on each other's heads in order to ''succeed''. See, your success is relevant to my failure. There's no room for everyone at the top. If your skills are better than mine then you're the one getting paid, but if we all had the same skills then there would be only so much ''success'' one could attain. Boring, isn't it? The whole concept of ''success'' is based on competition. This of course promotes scientific and economic progress but also guarantees that the vast majority of people will be ''unsuccessful'' and therefore unhappy. The whole concept of society is based on a system that produces and preserves inequalities. Ironically enough, we all grow up getting conditioned in a system that promotes competition, dreaming about a world of justice and equality while doing our best to make sure we actively participate in this race against everyone else.
Your millions would be worth nothing if everyone was a millionaire. Your scientific knowledge would be worthless as well if everybody was a scientist. Nobody would pay doctors that much if everybody had anatomy or pathology knowledge. Your kids' maths teachers would be unemployed if you could teach your kids maths and your car mechanic would be starving if you could fix your car on your own. All those repeated analogies show that one's success is always relevant to somebody else's failure. You are born to join this race that helped our species evolve, probably saved us from exctinction and could potentially lead to the destruction of our planet's ecosystems, all fueled by human greed for success and domination.
''Would we still need each other in a world without competitiveness?''
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You weren't born to live. You were born to succeed.
You weren't born to experience life. You were born to achieve.
But you can choose to just be happy. You can choose to be grateful for anything and everything you have. In fact you SHOULD be thankful for your health and the ability to see, hear, speak and breath. It's not granted. Today is a gift, that's why they call it the present. We humans get too caught up in our business and earthly troubles that we forget about what really matters, like our family and our health. Your health is your wealth and your family is all you need in order to be happy. And happiness is all you need in life.
You shape your own life with the power of Love.
Thank you for your attention!
Highest Regards
@lordneroo