By Jeremy Intal

Regardless of our goals or our age, the metrics with which we define our success plays a huge role in our lives. Whether we engage in the social entrepreneurship sphere or not, our metrics of success often steer our motives for action. In truth, too often society equates an individual’s success with his or her job, what GES Short Talk speaker Matt Tranchin referred to as “occupational symbolism.”

For Matt, the motives for action did not come immediately. Declaring his major well into his junior year at Northwestern and lacking a set path for his future, he realized the greatest impetus for action was simply being happy and chasing that happiness.

In his chase and search for happiness, Matt emphasized the importance of sacrifice to do what we love and not necessarily loving what we do, at least not in the beginning. Not every path starts smoothly, but when we come to realize that the path of life isn’t structured by a vertical ladder but with multiple, varied stepping stones, the path to happiness becomes more accessible. That’s true happiness.

For Nathaniel Whittemore, the second speaker for the inaugural GES Short Talks, success and happiness epitomize the important transition in the hands of today’s generation. Never in history has the definition of success been more elastic than now. Whittemore sights the recent surge in this generation’s impatience and proactive-ness in digital and physical protest to enact the social change they want to see. To Nathaniel, it is indubitably the generation of agency, the generation of frustration, of inspiration, and of action.

No longer do people adhere to the “real world” version of success. Alternatively, this freedom to redefine success, Nathaniel adamantly states, is “more terrifying and more wonderful” than ever before. This is the burden of our freedom, this is the privilege of agency, this is our moment to reclaim our definition of happiness and success. And this is why we are here as active participants at the Global Engagement Summit.