The Right to Fail from William Zinsser

Initially I would like to state that I agree with Zinsser on the fact that the word “drop-out” is only used for people under 21 which I believe is a little discriminating because people beyond this age can fail as well and as bad as we young people can.
A very important question everyone has to ask him or herself at some point in his life is “what is success and what success means individually”. For me, success has a lot to do with happiness, freedom and personal and professional fulfillment. However, there is always the fear of failing. This fear is created by the ONE right our society does not grant us, “the right to fail” without severe social and personal consequences since society solely refers success to material wealth and well-being.
With regards to my personal experiences, I am quite familiar with the fear to fail. A good example happened right after high-school. Since I did not go to college right after high-school as I did not feel emotionally and physically ready, I felt like being a total “let-down” for my parents, having them pointing out, they even do it to this day, that “it would have been better to enter college right away”. When Zinsser says “Who is to say, then, if there is any right path to the top, or even to say what the top consists of?” he points out that there are many possibilities to reach one’s individual goals and everybody should have the right to determine their path in order to achieve them. The socially-accepted path is not necessarily the right one for one person since we are all unique individuals. Additionally, I like the fact that he raises the question about “the top” and what the top should be. For me, the “top” is to graduate from NAU and have a assistant management position at a major business hotel and keep my relationship with my boyfriend of 3 years. My parents, however, have much bigger plans for me. They want me to be the GM of a leading hotel, traveling the world not having any emotional ties to anyone. Consequently, I am constantly trying to do the “right” thing, trying to please them, not to appear as a failure, and simultaneously trying to achieve what I consider the right thing to be. I guess, this illustrates pretty good 2 entirely different definitions of the “top”. I know my parents would never openly classify me as a failure, should I “fail” and not do what’s right in their eyes, but I would intuitively know, that I did something wrong. Another aspect of his essay is that success and failure are very close knit and both lie in the eye of the beholder. I totally agree with him, but I also have to say that it is sometimes quite hard to realize this truth and then, even more difficult, having to face your parents or other people close to you who most of the time totally DISAGREE with your decisions and actions.
The very last statement he makes “Maybe we are learning again to cherish the right of every person to succeed on his own terms and to fail as often as necessary along the way” is very powerful, as he points out that every person should have the freedom and the right to fail as often as necessary on their individual way to success. Personally, I think it can be particularly healthy to fail since you learn to cherish success even more.