There’s a very odd dichotomy in the way we as a society think about success.

Everyone assures me I need to have a plan, I need to know what I’m doing, I need to be sure to have clear goals and ways to meet them. Everybody wants to be top of the class. Everyone should strive to look outstanding, for college applications and resumes and whatever else. 

But when you read success stories, they don’t work like that. Walt Disney was fired from his first newspaper job for “a lack of creativity.” JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series was rejected by 11 publishers before being accepted for publication. Albert Einstein worked in a patent office in Zurich for several years because he was rejected from every teaching position he applied to. And not to call myself a massive success story or anything like that, but the only reason I ever had the opportunity to apply for this column was because I was recommended by my journalism teacher. And the only reason I knew the journalism teacher was because I was taking her class after being kicked out of the English class I’d planned to take. It’s a long story.

Granted, perhaps we don’t tell stories about people reaching success through conventional means because they aren’t as interesting, or aren’t as inspiring, or something similar. But at the same time, isn’t unpredictability supposed to be a hallmark of life? Anything can happen, good, bad, or otherwise, and you just have to roll with it. 

On a similar note — why is failure so stigmatized? If you think everything happens for a reason, then clearly there was a reason for failure as well. If you believe the opposite, that life is a random comedy of errors, then there’s probably very little you can do to avoid foundering if events just happen to play out that way.

Either way, no one can be successful all the time. It’s physically impossible. The world doesn’t work that way. Everyone at some point is going to fail, and the only thing you can do is move on from it. I’m aware of this, and I’m 17.

The frustrating thing about being 17, though, is that no matter how aware of it I am, I’ve never really had the chance to experience it. Some days it feels like the rest of the world is yelling at me that I need to have a plan, I need to be setting goals to maximize my potential, and if anything doesn’t go the way I expect it to, then I’m a failure. I haven’t had the chance to explore what the real world is like yet — what it would mean to find new opportunities, or any meaningful opportunities at all. I can be aware as I’d like of life’s potential to take sharp turns, but it’s hard to understand it when everything seems to be trying to shove a step-by-step route I just can’t follow down my throat. 

Success is one of those things we place a lot of importance on without quite ever actually defining it. Maybe that’s why it seems so elusive — how do you know when you’ve actually made it, so to speak?

Besides, if a life can change for the better with just one unexpected opportunity, clinging tightly to some concrete plan seems like it might end up being more of a hindrance than a help in the long run. 

But then again, I’m 17. What do I know about success?