We were not created to run endlessly—yet we turned running into a daily ritual, worshipping the summit so devoutly that we forgot the path. We urge our children to be “the top of their class,” yet we forget to ask: Why climb in the first place?
Success has become a wall decoration more than a life to be lived. Grades have become tickets to admission, not bridges to meaning.
We boast about shiny trophies while ignoring the shoulders that carried them.
We parade the image of “achievement,” then lower our voices when someone collapses behind the scenes.
Thus, an entire generation has learned to smile on the stage… and suffocate backstage—reducing their identity to a number that pleases others but betrays themselves.
But this isn’t poetic intuition alone.
A large meta-analysis tracking changes in perfectionism among university students from 1989 to 2016 found a linear rise across all three dimensions:
self-imposed demands, perceived demands from others, and demandingness toward others.
This isn’t a trend of taste—it’s a documented historical pattern.
And when perfectionism becomes an identity, burnout begins to surface.
The World Health Organization’s ICD-11 classifies burnout as chronic workplace stress that is not successfully managed—manifesting as exhaustion, mental distancing, and reduced effectiveness.
It is not a clinical disorder, but a professional phenomenon that slowly extinguishes meaning.
Because our schools and universities have become miniature versions of an early “professionalization of life,” a recent systematic review shows that academic pressure is strongly linked to increased anxiety, depression, and self-harm among adolescents: 48 out of 52 studies confirmed this association.
Not all exhaustion is heroism—sometimes it is a warning bell.
A global analysis of university students even reports high levels of burnout dimensions: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a reduced sense of accomplishment.
These numbers are not meant to scare us, but to remind us that we judge souls using the metrics of honor boards.
Not every success is glorious; some success is merely a polished mask covering delayed pain.
We raise our children to fear failure more than they love learning.
We give them certificates pinned to the wall with delicate needles—while their hearts remain pinned to unanswered questions.
We command them to keep running without pause; and when they stop to catch their breath, we accuse them of laziness.
How can a heart not burn when we demand that it shine endlessly without ever dimming?
A form of success that does not allow room for reflection is not success—it is another shape of depletion.
Success that feeds on your anxiety is merely a beautiful mask for postponed sorrow.
There is a difference between arriving because you matured, and arriving because you feared falling behind; one builds you, the other consumes you.
We do not seek to demolish the idea of success, but to restore its humanity:
to make it once again a path toward wholeness, not an endless ladder.
To understand that loss is part of awareness… that stopping is a skill… and that slowness—sometimes—is a different kind of speed.
Only then will we no longer need applause to feel that we have arrived.
