I believe more people wish for you to fail rather than succeed.
Is this a view of a pessimist? Quite possibly. However, for me, this statement simply represents what reality is. Quite frankly, there are many people in this world who either want me to fail, or who don’t care about my success. The world just operates this way. As a result, the decision on how to react to those who hope for me to fail, lies within myself. An optimist would decide to prove all the failure hopefuls wrong. On the other hand, a pessimist would be too occupied focusing on those people who wish he or she would fail. The optimistic view appeals more to me.
The concept that someone is succeeding more than me is a hard one to grasp. Naturally, in this life, people are always trying to achieve more and trying to better themselves. When someone one ups me in an area I’m involved in, it’s not a comfortable feeling. It’s especially hard when I’ve worked so hard for something and someone comes along and does the job better. So when the two point zero version of me fails, it makes them feel better about themselves. Success and failure is a very competitive concept. It seems to me that when a person doesn’t accomplish the same thing someone couldn’t, it puts that person at ease.
Unfortunately, we live in a, “kick them when they’re down” type of society. Any time a high official or celebrity fails, it’s all over the media. Once again, a talked up individual fails, making a lesser person a little more self content. Our society thrives off of failure, and isn’t’ quick to give forgiveness or second chances.
Sometimes our society even likes to “kick them when they’re up” so to speak. When a person is on a roll and doing well, others will go out of their way to pick out any failure that corresponds with them. This way, it makes someone with their head on right look like they aren’t as well off as they appear. For example, one time I got and A on an algebra test. Algebra is my hardest subject in school. Once a good algebra student in my class heard of my good grade, they had to let people know that they always get A’s in algebra. This way that other student feels better about himself, and is trying to make others feel the same way towards him. This is just a simple example of how humans truly want to make themselves look good, and some go to extreme measures to do so.
Each individual has a choice when it comes to dealing with people who gain from failure in others. The choice is being the optimist or the pessimist toward the failure hopefuls. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. Go out and prove the failure hopefuls wrong by achieving success!