Preventions of Success

        I can claim many things prevented any of my successes, but that would be me giving into the reality that I am a very incapable person. But if I had to pick one, it would be the idea of time and how it continues to move forward while I stand here wallowing in my own failures. Time passes with each and ever second, minute, and hour, it waits for no one. Those who always move forward succeed and excel in the world. Those who stand and look back into the past will only slow their development and never attain the success they yearn for. The concept of time is one that humans developed in hopes to understand how the world works, simply put it's the idea of how the Earth revolves around the sun. And so from this concept, the limited amount of revolutions of the world prevents many successes from happening and stops many in their tracks to reflect on their past failures never to move forward again. For me, whenever I have failed at something I throw it away hoping that the subject will never focus again. This happens to me a lot in math class, when a hard lesson comes my way and I have just bombed the test, I push it aside and never bother to understand it because it's an embarrassment on my part that I do not understand it. But as we all know, math is a foundation type learning process, without the foundation, how can the future lessons stand on top of it? It can't, if you do not understand it now and never bother to understand it later, more failures will come to surface. As McCandless states "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet do will not take the initiative to change their situation [. . .]" (58). You can interpret his quote with the concept of time in mind. As people come and go, they continue living with their miserable lives, they lack the concept of time and how their lives have come thus far. If you take Chris' idea, it would be the opposite of mine. His idea states that people should look to the past and the should recognize their sufferings in order to change for the future. But since they do not take the time to do so, nothing will ever change in their lives never leading to success. Some of them may be successful in the fact that they have a job and a home, but they are not successful int he fact that they lead lives that do not appease them. Having a job and having a career are two completely different ideas, the latter is the only one that is able to make you happy. However, in order to have this happiness, one must take the time to understand themselves in a world where time keeps moving, this is not an easy task. As things go, most people live their lives on the spur of the moment rather than thinking about the future and how it will affect them.
      The second thing that can prevent success is the lack of privilege that people have. As far as education goes in the beginning twelve years, it's all free. Government still has your back and is paying for your education, reach college, not so lucky anymore. The government no longer funds us and we have to pay for a large sum of money for a higher degree. The lesser privileged now have no way of getting their higher degrees, instead they are forced to slave away working and have to pay for the tuition.The less fortunate are forced to turn away from the option of obtaining a better education and are forced to go into labor in order to provide for themselves. For example, in Breaking Through, an autobiography by Francisco Jimenez, the author comes to the United States in hopes for a brighter future. This is considered the land of the free and the land of opportunity. They soon find out that in order to make in America, you must work and it is not as easy as they had anticipated. Francisco starts working in the fields with his father picking strawberries on a pay to rent farm, meaning they rent the land and whatever sum of money they make more than 50% of the profit goes to the landlord. His father eventually cannot walk due to his bad back and cannot work to support the family. This places the burden on Francisco, who is only 15 or 16 years old and still in high school. Being less privileged than the rest of the world, he is unable to do anything to gain an upper hand in life, his grades begin to fall and his family is falling further and further in to debt. Of course his mother is also doing work in the fields, but that obviously is not enough money to provide for anything. As you can see, money is one of the many reasons in which success cannot happen. Francisco is actually a very bright student, but because of this lack of privilege he cannot allow his potential to grow. However, when we look at McCandless' case, he had no problem with money and was just about ready to become a student at Harvard Law School. This would be considered a high achievement on many people's part, even on my part that's seen as a major success. Because his family had money, he was able to achieve high standards and succeed in life rather than having to suffer such a cruel fate like Francisco having to work multiple jobs, attend school, and suffer the cruelness of society. Not only that, but the fact that Francisco was not a white male but instead an illegal immigrant from Mexico also made it hard for him to obtain certain jobs or positions. It was much easier for Chris to reach his goals of going in to the wild because he was more privileged, if he was not as fortunate or if he was not white, things would have not gone the ways they did. Living in a privileged family allowed him to feel society's nature of hypocrisy, this allowed him to make and obtain a passion unlike any other. From there on, his privilege in the fact that he was a white male allowed him to keep pushing for his passion, he was hired to work at many jobs such as burger king and wheat farming. If he were of different ethnicity, it would probably be significantly harder to obtain these jobs. People with more privilege tend to gain their successes with more ease than people that have less privilege.
       Finally, another idea that prevents success is the lack resolve individuals have. They lack the ability to settle a dispute, not with society, but with themselves. They attempt to live up to expectations and try to make themselves acceptable the eyes of others, having a well paying job and a sizable home, rather than trying to pursue their own dreams and passions. A person with a lack in resolve will never be able to obtain the success of happiness. For instance, many asian families, including mine, expect their children to go into the medical field. Sure, these types of jobs pay considerably well, but the amount of effort and time put into the major is back breaking. As a child, I had been pushed towards the idea of becoming some kind of doctor, and the idea has stuck with me ever since. Even now, I too have no idea what I really want to do like most people. I lack the ability to think for my self and my own happiness. Chris on the other hand has successfully gained his own passion, he is able to escape from the world of expectations and lived up to his own. When he goes into the wild, he makes up a name for himself. An identity that society has not given him, a name that will severe the ties between him and the rest of the world. He was no long "Chis McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own identity." (23) His resolve was so great that it allowed him to severe his ties with everything that he once had. He no longer wanted to live up to his parent's expectations of having a good job and living the life of a privileged person. Rather, he wanted to be his own person by settling his own dispute between him and society's views. He is able to achieve the success of becoming free and "unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers [. . .]" (23). He is able to get away with from his parent's dreams and is able to pursue his own by allowing himself the opportunity to break free from his metaphoric chains. Aside from the fact that this dream seems unreasonable and that it breaks all the teachings that our parents have taught us, he is at lease able to pursue the life that he has wanted instead of living up to the expectations that his parents put him through.