Growing up, I centered my life around two principles: perfectionism and optimism. I became a perfectionist due to my fear of failing and an optimist due to an urge to hide the world from my true feelings. There were always points in which one principle clashed with the other. For example, sometimes I wasn’t sure if should call out the problems of a situation I encountered and try my hardest to fix them, or if i should just hope for a positive outcome. Over the years, I have found ways to intertwine the two principles, and looking back, it appears as if I was using concepts in meta ethics as well as utilitarianism to do so. As a perfectionist, I had the mentality of being “the best of the best and nothing less.” This motto drove me to success and is the reason that I went to college at 16. I had this urge to be perfect because I thought that if I wasn’t the dream candidate universities and employers searched for, then they wouldn’t accept me, causing …show more content…
When something is of intrinsic value, it is important to the person because they simply love doing it, and when something is of instrumental value, it is important because it gets that person somewhere. After learning this, I realized that my desire to be impeccable heightened my inability to differentiate between the two. This is because I only pursued activities that would allow me to appear as the perfect candidate. Whether those activities brought me happiness or not didn’t matter because I believed that success in my future would bring me enough joy. Now that I am in college, I wonder if I should indulge in activities in which the only thing I gained was pure happiness. Then again, I wonder if pure happiness is essential to be successful. As I move forward and ask these questions, I will be able to understand what exactly I want in life; happiness or success and if it’s possible for me to obtain