Some people believe that education and career are the essential ways to achieve success. I think success is not a vague term, and the meaning of it varies from person to person. I would say even small things, like feeding a cat, that some of us would not consider as a success, are a success.
Success can be varied as academic, social, and even cultural. Being academically good at something does not mean that you will be successful in life or relationships. It is common to relate success with financial outcomes, but it is wrong. In addition, success is what makes you happy and peaceful. For example, in the seventies, there was this community called “the flower children”.
Because of the post-war effects, their only goal was to live life peacefully and not care about the capitalist order, which was globally trending. They organised many activism campaigns about peace, which many people paid attention to. They did not go to a certain school for spreading awareness, but they were successful in the end.
From my point of view, success is the process of what you can achieve the most by yourself. It is not related to neither money nor career. You can always have a job with a high salary or make lots of money. The essential point is the process and progress it would take you there. For instance, I was bad at cooking, and I wanted to make a birthday cake for my grandmother. I was aware that I did not have the training for cooking, but it was easy to reach the recipes online. It took me a few tries to get the cake done, but at the end of the day, my grandmother loved her birthday cake, which made me feel successful and honoured.
To summarise, the process does not need a big and radical ending, which we call success. The result has different kinds of meanings, but in the end, the rewarding feeling is the same.