The Great Divide on What Defines a Successful Life| National Catholic Register

What is a successful life?

When NBC News asked Gen Z recently, they, to no one’s surprise, got a variety of answers — but precious few of the 18- to 29-year-olds asked suggested they saw getting married and having a family as an objective measure of a successful life.

The poll was meant to ascertain Gen Z’s thoughts on President Donald Trump and their political priorities ahead of next year’s mid-term elections. But while the responses were entirely predictable in that respect, tacked on to the end was the question, “Which of the following [13 phrases] is important to your personal definition of success?”

Both male and female respondents selected “having a job or career you find fulfilling,” but both followed up with almost exclusively financial measurements of success: having enough money to do what you want and achieving financial independence.

Further down on the list — well past the suggested financial hallmarks — were “getting married,” “having children” and “making [my] family proud.”

Spirituality ranked somewhere near dead last for all four groups, which might explain why the results are so skewed. Without a good spiritual foundation, little of what is universal and true can cut through the din of materialism.

I don’t totally think Gen Z is wrong, at least when it comes to what society defines as “success” and a “successful life,” partly because we’ve come to define success as almost exclusively related to comfort. “Successful people” are thought to be those who have penthouse apartments and private jets. They take shareholder meetings and win big trials. They rack up worldly achievements and, consequently, worldly goods. The worldly goods then come to be known as markers of success.

The political breakdowns make a bit more sense: Harris voters, both male and female, ranked marriage and family further down on their personal lists of successful traits. So did women who voted for Trump. The only group to put “having children” at the top of their lists was young male Trump voters.

But let’s not celebrate too quickly: Those same men ranked “having children” much higher than being married, suggesting that they, too, suffer from a breakdown in values. No group ranked a life of service as a successful life — and certainly not the respondents who leaned conservative. Only Harris-voting males listed it in their top three success indicators.

NBC marketed the study as a snapshot of Gen Z’s views on marriage and family; and in a way, they are. But they’re also indicative of where we are as a society. And it also begs the question: Should we be looking to live successful lives or good lives?

For Catholics, true success is aligning one’s purpose both with the common good and with God’s purpose for us. He probably won’t be measuring my book sales at the pearly gates, but St. Peter will want to know whether, to quote the Baltimore Catechism, I knew God, loved God and served God.

We will be judged on how well we loved.

In that sense, our success won’t be judged so much on what we have but on what we give away.

I don’t think of my marriage or my family, particularly, in terms of success, or whether they will make my life successful, at least in the world’s terms. I don’t get trophies and accolades for going home and loving my family; and even while I may have endured eight years of NaPro treatments to get some of them, my children aren’t really achievements. They’re people: human beings with gifts and talents and dreams and goals of their own. And even if I were to see the fruits of their lives, they aren’t my achievements; for them, I’m simply planting trees I’ll never climb, but they will.

In part, I think the Gen Z respondents are thinking about marriage and family in the same way: They’re expected developments, but not ones that will necessarily happen for everyone; and, while married people with children consistently report having happier and more fulfilling lives, the Catholic Church recognizes that the most important vocation is to the priesthood, and that certainly won’t come with kids (at least not of the genealogical variety, even if it may feel sometimes like you’re overwhelmed by disobedient “children,” dear priests).

They’re also not things you can effort into existence. My husband and I got lucky that we had an excellent doctor who was faithful to the Catholic Church and guided us through infertility brought on by severe endometriosis. But no matter how many shots I took or surgeries I had or ultrasounds I endured, there was no guarantee of success. If anything, it has reminded us over and over that each child we’ve had (or that anyone has) is a true miracle.

And that’s where “success,” as NBC News defines it, falls short. A successful life can be judged by data. A good life can only be judged by those who live it.

There are certainly many oft-repeated critiques I could level at the whippersnappers who answered this poll, about how society no longer values families and how young people think of children as burdens that interrupt the processes of self-actualization and self-fulfillment and culturally approved selfishness. After all, who would want to be thinking of self-sacrifice when you could be pursuing self-indulgence?

That message, though, that the richness of family life is more important than material success — and that basing one’s view of a successful life on material wealth and personal gain can lead only to despair — is, maybe at this point, baked in. People put off having families until they have financial stability. We think more about what our careers will look like than our families. Self-sacrifice is, of course, difficult. It’s the hardest thing most of us will do.

By stressing a greater, more successful connection to the spiritual, there could be reverberations up the list. Even when it comes to jobs, is it really more important that the job we do gives us a comfortable life or that the job we do matters to the common good? Would we rather leave behind a legacy of houses and cars and jewelry or a legacy of service? Of humility and of self-sacrifice?

Perhaps the best thing we can do is stress that the good life really is superior to the successful one and that good and successful aren’t necessarily one and the same. The good life will always be successful, but maybe not the way society defines. The successful life can be good, but we should strive for more.

That, of course, isn’t to say that we should tell Gen Z to strive for less. It may be that we return to stressing that the pursuit of the good life is worth the effort, even if the pursuit of the successful life pays dividends in a more visible way. When you start to think about how your life is enriched by things like family and vocation, it’s hard not to see material gains as somewhat dim in comparison.