LossVsSuccess

Can Loss Be More Important Than Success? (or something like that)

This essay got a score of 6

Despite common misconception, true success lies in the journey, not the destination. The journey to victory has its ups and down, losses and gains, but that’s is where one truly learns and benefits. Literature is fertile with an endless stream of encounters where characters come across great loss only to learn the best of lessons.

In John Green’s novel The Fault In Our Stars, the protagonist Hazel lives under the fear of death. Through her battle with cancer, she tries to distance herself from the people around her, thinking she was doing them a favor. Hazel thought that the less time she spends with those who love her, the easier it would be for them when cancer eventually wins the battle and kills her. When Hazel meets and mutually falls in love Augustus, a cancer survivor, she uselessly tries to lessen their encounters, avoiding unnecessarily encounters with him. Later, Hazel and Augustus find out that a new type of cancer spread into Gus’s body, and, unfortunately, it only took a few days until he dies. Through the heartbreak and remorse, Hazel learned that a person fearing death while living is a person dying every single day. Losing Augustus taught Hazel the most important lesson and helped her look into the world with clearer, less gloomy perception.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho perhaps represents the best example for this argument. Veronika is beautiful, young, and rich; she has friends and a loving family. Still, Veronika feels hollow deep inside, and decides to commit suicide. She ingests huge amounts of different medicines, writes a death npt, and waits. Veronika, to her surprise, wakes up in a mental rehab and is informed that although her suicide attempt did not work, it has weakened her heart so much that she is expected to only live for a couple more weeks. During her stay in the mental institution, Veronika meets a group of people and gets to hear their stories. She grows fond of them and finds true love within the arms of Eduard, a schizophrenic patient. During her last days, she explores true meanings of friendships and their extends. Even though Veronika dies, her soul finds peace for she leaves this world with answered questions and quenched desires.

Hazel and Veronika weren’t the first, and surly are not the last,who truly understood and were able to use the power of loss to turn up the curtains that blurred their visions of the world. Afterall, grief does not change you, it reveals you!

-Aya Adel