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Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

Bill Watterson#8

CultureLifeSatisfactionSocietySuccessValues

About this quote

What does it mean?
Living authentically is difficult in a culture that demands status and excess.
In plain terms
Society judges you harshly if you do not chase money and status.
What can you take from it?
Authentic living requires resisting cultural pressure.

Where it applies

  • career choices
  • parenting
  • midlife crisis

Putting it to work

  • define your own success
  • ignore status metrics

Questions to consider

  • What is true success to you?
  • How does culture pressure you?

Another view

Some people find genuine fulfillment in climbing the ladder.

More from Bill Watterson

  1. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.

    Permalink to quote #7
  2. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing …

    Permalink to quote #5

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