Money and Success, Who Wins

Great Expectations is the story of a young boy. He is quite poor, but as the tale moves on, he falls in love with a rich and spoiled girl. Despite her cruel ways, he devotes the rest of his life to winning her over. He aspires to become a gentleman with the aid of bundles of money that he inherits and sees this as the only way out of the common life he is leading. The boy connects success and happiness solely with money and possessions. Unfortunately, the association leads to the downfall of his character. This is the path taken by too many individuals in today's society. Although they make a correlation between money and success, this connection is substantially unjustified. It results in the disillusions of children and adults alike, who see proof of their assumptions in the media and real life.

One of the causes for people thinking this way is found in everyday life. Maybe someone notices a family down the street with an awfully large house and abundant room for anything they desire. They also happen to hold quite prominent executive positions at a large corporation. Since they appear to be wealthy and have many possessions, the obvious conclusion to draw from this is that they are successful because of those qualities. Without any other thoughts involved, an opinion is formed that if they had all that money and other "things," they too would become just as successful.

This view is, in fact, unjustified and backward. The judgments they have passed in that short amount of time are based purely on assumptions and shallow observations from the outside. They have no idea that incredible talent might be present within the minds of the people down the street. Their success has not just sprung up from their wealth and riches. They have, perhaps, earned every bit of their beautiful house, cars, and other possessions that are so desired among observers.

A definition of success should be established before going on. Success is defined as the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted. If someone only desires material possessions, then, if achieved, they have reached success. This kind of success alone will not produce happiness in the lives of these people. The majority of individuals in our world aim for success through happiness, health, and prosperity. Aspirations to a money-related success are not likely to produce these valued possessions. Only in the world of television, advertisements, and movies, is that kind of life possible. The media is a prominent cause of people believing that money is the key to success. Fairy tale-type stories often present people as suddenly becoming happy and successful as the result of coming into a lot of money, perhaps by luck. One example of this is in advertisements. Their main catch is to show people who are using, or have used, their products. The aim is to make the consumer believe that if you use whatever it is that they are trying to sell, then you will be successful. Here, success is coupled with possessions. In movie or television life, these two separate items are often dependent on each other; a package deal of sorts.

In television, the idea of game shows sometimes plays very heavily on the greed of the contestants. They give much of what they have and who they are in order to win big on game