Let me digress for a moment to explain to a great degree what allowed many to be successful in these United States.

Why do the majority of people buy things? Well, they may be coaxed into doing so by the majority. You just had to read the DiVinci Code, see The Bourne Identity, watch Friends, The Family Guy, listen to the band No Doubt. But you don't like all the popular movies, shows, books, songs / artists, do you? Why? Because you are you, an individual, and it is this individuality that you must tap into to become successful. You can't merely just try to sell what everyone else is selling without putting a spin on it, without putting your personal stamp of individuality on whatever it is your selling. After all, a hamburger is just a hamburger, but a hamburger sold by an orange clown who laughs and dances along with other characters and gives you neat toys with your meal . . . now that sells (not to mention McD's fast food system outshines all the others). It is the inherent freedoms of America that allows for greater creativity, therefore, greater individuality, greater opportunity for success. To support, the majority of Nobel Prize winners come from the United States, a result of great freedoms--political, intellectual, social.

Let's now move onto appreciation.

As I sit here writing this in the United (key word here) States of America, I ponder the millions who have immigrated leaving behind family and, for some, riches. Yes, riches. It is not only the poor who come here but the politically disadvantaged. I have heard personal accounts of mother's in the Middle East turning their daughter's in after being seen with non-family member males (ultimately being killed for their "misdeed"), a young woman from the same area on her way to college who saw a friend on the road dead with her fingers cut off because she wore fingernail polish, grandparents taken out in the middle of the night and shot without explanation, a young woman when she was a child running with her mother in the dark in a country in Asia, fleeing persecution . . . and the stories go on. This country, with all its inherent freedoms, was made possible by the thousands of lives lost in the American Revolution and Civil War. It is here where one is able to make his or her political, religious and, to a great degree, financial choices. Bottom line, people want to be free to express their inner most desires, and it is only in a place that allows this to the greatest degree possible that people can to the greatest degree be happy / successful.

I say all this because education, learning, is all about understanding, and in order to fully understand, appreciate the opportunities that we have here in this country, will we be able to more fully actualize our happiness, as in "the pursuit of happiness" (whatever you define as happiness / success). To put things in perspective, if you find yourself complaining about finances, lack of opportunity, difficulties, as long as they are not life threatening, you are doing better, even in your disadvantaged state, than most of the rest of the world. If you live in an apartment and have a car, you are doing better than 90% of the rest of the world. Even if you are making more than $2 a day, you are doing better than 3 billion people or half the world. And if this is of little concern to you, maybe that is the place to begin, for we can not reach full actualization (happiness / success) without reaching as far beyond ourselves as possible. Consider the following.

The Hindu states that selfish desire is fine. It's OK, for we all begin there. A infant's vision and understanding of its existence is fixated solely on the self. It can not even see its parents in the beginning. Eventually it becomes aware of them, sees them for the first time, and then siblings, peers, extended family, community and so on. And the Hindu believes that selfish desires are like toys along the path of life, that a child with toys is fine, yet sad is the state of an adult fixated at the same level. Growth is a natural aspect of our nature, and if it is stunted at any point in our lives, then we have a much greater opportunity for sadness and depression. According to many physicians and psychologists, a couple of key factors in our on-going health is the need for continual learning and contact with and assisting of others.

Nevertheless, freedom and the desire to be as free as one can be are at the core of our being. And this can be bore out by those who live in this freest of countries who are still not content with the limitations put on them, mostly women and minorities. So we can see that finding and expressing our core desires is not only essential, primary to our existence, it is essential to our emotional, social, political, financial and spiritual health. We must, in order to maximize our success in these areas, have the freedom to do so, and we must not only exercise our freedoms but appreciate them to maximize our success.

Now that you know that great freedom is essential for your human welfare and human potential, you must realize that it is essential you understand what it is that you need in order to maximize your potential. Remember, you can listen to what others tell you to do, what systems to follow, but ultimately it is up to you to determine whether or not a particular system or systems (you may want to mix and match) are best for you. A point to consider is that everyone wants great freedom but once a person has it, it takes great work and self-accountability to maximze that freedom--to find happiness and success. But this is a topic for another article.