The most important decision I will have to make to be happy and successful is not the type of career I am going into to, or which college I am going to, or where I am going to live. The most important decision I will ever have to make is deciding just how much I am willing to sacrifice to have the type of life I want to have.
A person can easily succeed in his or her career if they abandon all other efforts, including friends, family, love, and, most importantly, their principles. Businessmen face problems like this every day. The management of companies like Enron ignored their principles once, and from that single decision, that single compromise, they changed. They became different people, people who “compromised” more and more until one day they found that their principles were gone completely along with any feeling of guilt or shame. They became the best kind of businessmen, but the worst kind of people.
When I was younger, I just wanted to be rich. That was it; that was my goal in life. But, as I said above, just trying to be rich can be far more costly than anyone ever dreamed. I will never be the life of the party. I will never spend all night “clubbing” with my friends. I will never have a cell phone that rings incessantly with invitations. It is a sacrifice some people could never make, but I will. The entire time I will look to the future; I will look to a day before my body fails me that I will be free of the material bonds of occupation and financial insecurity. I want to be able to not only travel the world, but to experience it firsthand. I want to climb the Rockies, walk the Great Wall, jump out of an airplane, spend a fortnight in my Shangri-La. I want to do all of this with my principles intact, at peace with the knowledge that I have remained true to myself throughout my journey, that I did not sacrifice too much.