We are brought up in a society
that makes us believe that in order to be successful, we must be strong leaders
and wealthy consumers. The American dream: You’re happily married, with three
beautiful children and a dog. You’ve got one or two fancy cars, a big house,
and a stable job. As a college student pursuing majors in occupational therapy
(what?) and East Asian languages and cultures (what can you do with that?), I
am constantly bombarded with messages that claim that they know the secret to
success. What’s the secret, you ask? Working hard. That’s what I’ve always been
told. Get A’s in your studies and go to med school. Find rich people, network
and make connections. Work hard and you’ll get what you deserve.
That’s what I hear everywhere
else. And then I go to church and the Gospel reading is about parable of the
workers in the vineyard (Mt 20: 1-16). The owner of the vineyard hired laborers
throughout the day and paid them all the same usual daily wage at the end, a
concept which challenged me greatly. If I were one of those laborers who had
been working there since dawn, I’d be grumbling too! Yet the owner says, “Are
you envious because I am generous?” The rest of society pushes me to come in
first place, yet this passage tells me that “the last will be first and the
first will be last.”
So where is the balance? To this
day, I am still constantly torn between what the world says is success and what
the Church teaches is success, and I don’t think this contradiction will be
resolved anytime soon. It’s frustrating. Seriously, what do you want from me?
Sometimes I wonder if the middle “average” path is the easiest way to go. If
monetary gains, material wealth, and social status are fleeting, then where do
we put our worth and identification of success with? Is it a sin for me to feel
happy to get a paycheck?
John M. Breen, a professor at
Loyola Marymount University, presents an alternate approach to success in his
article “Catholic Lawyer and the Meaning of ‘Success’” in the Catholic Lawyer journal. In this article, he highlights the importance of the
motivation behind wealth and monetary success. Success in our world may be
measured quantitatively by how much money is in your bank account. However, Breen
elaborates that the motivation and the drive that leads to success should not
be greed or selfishness, but rather the perfect love as exemplified by Jesus
Christ. Yes, big bucks can make a difference in your life, but what matters
more is how you have reached out to others and transformed their lives for the
better through the work you do.
The late Pope John Paul II stated
in the encyclical letter Centisimus annus, that the
desire to be better off only becomes wrong when you define being better off as
“having” rather than “being.” Perhaps the success that really counts is not
about your salary, connections, or grades. Maybe instead it’s about being
loving and generous, like the owner in the vineyard, despite the criticisms.
The Church encourages us to focus on who you are, how you love and sacrifice
for others, instead of what you have. The world tells me to work hard, but even
having achieved the American dream, it only remains a false representation of
success. It seems rather risky to invest in something intangible like loving
others, but when one truly offers one’s own life as a gift, it brings out the
good and the talents of others. That, I personally find, is a much more
enduring form of success to strive for and to celebrate when it is achieved.
