The Art Of Language

 

Brian Lee

Mr.Pangier

American Literature

2017-04-26

Successful Life

We all dream about having a successful life in the future. The order to have a successful life, you need one of this: money, power in society or family. There are lots ways to have a successful life because we all have different background and perspective of a successful life. I personally think that to able to have a successful life, you need sacrifice from somewhere. It can be from yourself, family or people are around you.

   Kevin Durant is 2013-2014 NBA MVP and top class basketball player in the world. I consider his basketball career a success because he made a contract with Nike, so he can have signature shoes, he is also starting small forward in his team with a decent amount of salary. But. to able to be successful as he is now, there was a lot of sacrifice during his childhood. He had a childhood with a single mom with two sisters and one older brother. Since his family was very poor, he didn’t really have a house to live. He had to move around several houses. Kevin Durant’s mom worked so hard, so she can able to have to feed her kids well. In 2007 NBA rookie draft, Kevin Durant was drafted by Seattle SuperSonic as a 2nd pick overall. He had a successful rookie, so he was able to get a ‘rookie of the year’ in 2008. He also won so many scoring titles as well. In 2014, he got chosen as a ‘KIA NBA MVP.’ During MVP speech, he appreciated the staffs and teammates. At the end of his speech, he was talking about how he was able to be a basketball player because of mom’s sacrifice during his childhood and he said ‘mom, you are the real MVP’ (Kevin Durant 2014).

   Starting from the second semester, we were talking about ‘success’ a lot. What is a success? How can we have a successful life? All of the freewriting questions are also asking about success. For supportive information, we read ‘The Great Gatsby’ during class, When we finished the book, we were discussing whether Gatsby had a successful life or not. Most of us finalized that Gatsby had a successful life with wealth, but he failed with a relationship between people. The book didn’t really talk about how he became the richest person in NYC specifically, but I can obviously tell that he sacrificed himself to be the richest person in NYC. I’m guessing that he thought the way he can find Daisey is to be a rich person. ‘I’m going to call up Daisy tomorrow and invite her over here to tea.’ (Fitzgerald 70). From this quote, I felt that Gatsby was very excited to see her again which I thought Gatsby really loved her. But Daisey has been changed.

   Kevin Durant’s mom sacrifice herself to make her son be a great basketball player. Gatsby sacrificed himself to be the richest person in NYC, but he had a different goal to be a rich person. Which it was brought Daisy back to him, but he wasn’t able to do that. Even though he wasn’t able to get her back, people thought he is the most successful man in the world. I have thought about, without sacrifice from you or people around you, you won’t able to have a successful life.