In our “modern” society, where everyone wants to be the best at everything, we seem to always be grading ourselves, especially since it’s simple with the help of numbers: weight, GPA, game scores.
As a result, I see myself, my friends and my peers struggling to maintain their numbers, while letting other essential principles slide. Cheating suddenly seems to be okay, just to get that perfect grade on the report card. Asking a teacher to round your B+ doesn’t seem desperate; in fact, it’s encouraged. This applies to not only academics but also to nearly everything else. Skipping meals seems okay if it means dropping that extra pound. In fact, you might even be commended for your dedication. By ignoring the abstract concepts such as health and character, we’ve developed a way to get what we want by sacrificing what we’ve deemed useless and immeasurable anyway.
I’ve struggled with these things for much of my life, and I still do, even when I tell myself that there are greater things that define who I am. I still light up when I hear someone tell me that I look like I’ve lost weight. I can’t help but feel accomplished when someone congratulates me for sweeping my sets in tennis or getting an A on a test. But what I don’t hear as much from the people around me are compliments on character or choices. No one says, “Wow, I think you did the right thing to lose those points on the homework assignment instead of copying.” Instead, I’m greeted with surprise and kind offers to copy their homework if I “needed” it.
Our struggle to meet our numerical goals suddenly makes it okay to table our character goals. But for how long? After all, if you don’t work towards a goal, you’ll lose sight of it and get further and further away. There’s nothing wrong with looking at the numbers, but ignoring the choices that got you there seems blatantly ignorant.
As our world evolves to measure each other with a more definite line, we lose sight of things we can’t measure. We’ve begun to let go of our core essence as human beings. Because we can’t measure true intelligence, beauty and good character, we replace it with things we can measure like grades, weight and the number of friends we have. We can’t go on complaining about society’s standards when we’re the ones who are really setting them.