As a race, we have been granted the innate desire to take things one step further. To go above and beyond. We count these moments – these moments where we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, reach for the stars, to make the unknown known - we count these moments as our proudest achievements. And these moments were made possible not necessarily by the scientists and engineers and astronauts, but rather by the minds who had the desire to pursue these ambitions. We have discovered that when we create something that awards us with pride and a sense of achievement, we literally feel happy. Yet despite the honorable and tenacious efforts of those brave pioneers, we seemed to have lost that desire to seek that happiness. Or perhaps we have just forgotten that we are all still pioneers ourselves. Those brilliant and opportunistic pillars of society were given the opportunity to do something. To create something. And they seized it. Nowadays, most of us fail to recognize the opportunities that lie right before us. They sit there, slowing warping until they eventually diminish into a 'missed' opportunity. What is it going to take to reach over and seize one?.
There is so much said about feeling happy or fulfilled in your career, yet a rather large portion of the population isn't in it for the fulfilment or self-satisfaction that comes with a successful career. Even though we hope that our daily wages take a back-seat to the rest of life's little pleasures, too often it boils down to just the money, and that desire for greater wealth often ends up being the driving force in our lives. In his article, The Happiness of Pursuit, Kluger notes that "money does not buy happiness," but rather that it is "pursued in the belief that it will make us happy" (177). While Kluger's opinion on the exact effect that money plays when it comes to a person's individual happiness is unnoted, he does emphasize that it plays a major role altogether.
