Aspirations are hopes and dreams or goals of a person. Aspiration is desire and could come in many different forms. Each person may aspire different things including things in the subjects of wealth, love, success, happiness and so much more.
Aspiration may change through age and factors such as culture, religion, and ethnicity may affect what a person aspires. For instance, as a child, my aspirations were to travel in space and become the greatest astronaut who ever walked the universe. As I grow more mature, little by little each day, these ambitions become more realistic as my power of imagination slowly gets drained and replaced with knowledge, facts, and all the long nights spent on studying. Growing up a little more, around secondary school, my dreams became more realistic, hoping to work as an architect (because of enjoying art and a little influence from How I Met Your Mother) and to travel around the world before I die. Eventually, those dreams died a few years afterwards because of the idea of "work for money so you get rich and live a happy retired life" was planted into the deep dark holes of my brain. I changed. Instead of planning to work on what I enjoy, my goals are to work on what would make me most successful or a job that I would make the most money out of whether I like it or not. The final answer, engineering. I love science, but sometimes it makes me feel stupid with all the weird constants and variable. Although it is not what I do best, I am trying to cope with it by trying to force myself into liking it -which is working by far- but however, my dream of travelling around the world would always be there.
The reason of this is because of globalization, the world is spinning faster and faster, new technology entering the world, the iphone with fingerprinting password, more people leading to overpopulation and I'm just a teeny tiny part of it. Compare to the billions of people in the world, I'm just a small particle of the world. What makes me different from the other billions of people? Education. And this is why people tend to take the path that would lead them to the most success rather than the path that would make them happy or satisfied. There level of competition that exists in the modern world is higher than ever. People are competing for everything: jobs, wealth, fame, EVERYTHING. If you snooze you lose, if you want to do what makes you happy, nobody cares, but the future is real dark down that road. This forces people to do things that would make them rich rather than things that would make them happy.
This can also be seen clearer in the novel, The Great Gatsby, in many different characters.
Starting off with Nick, Nick aspires to be rich, leading him into the bond business, which in fact, is not serving him well compared to his colleagues, Tom and Gatsby. Nick is a typical character following the American Dreams, which most aspirations during the American Dream is to become successful and wealthy. Nick has a dream of becoming rich, but in reality, we all know that the American Dream is not as easy to achieve as it sounds and selling bonds would get him nowhere. He might be richer than before, being able to support himself and buy things he never had before, but he would never become as rich as Gatsby, or even Tom.
Gatsby's story is a story that suits the song "Way Back into Love" by Hugh Grant. Gatsby aspires for love, Daisy's love and he would do anything in order to achieve, and by anything includes setting up expensive parties every weekend just hoping that Daisy would come. Gatsby is stuck in the past and can't seem to move on. He is stuck in his delusion that he could make Daisy love him again and he attempts to do so through his huge pile of money. Gatsby's concept of money being able to solve everything shows that Gatsby is tricking himself and is brainwashed by the power of money. Although he knows that it is impossible for things to be exactly the same as it was but he is tricking himself just to get his hopes up and prevent him from becoming heartbroken.
Jordan is also an interesting character. In my opinion, Jordan aspires for wealth and fame. The reason I believe in this is because of the fact that she cheated the her golf tournament, crowning her as the champion. Jordan is willing to cheat in order to win, showing that she either wants to win really bad, she wants the pot from being victorious, she wants fame from being all over media, or she is scared from losing face or reputation.
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