Life its ownself......................................

     In fact, you'd need to squint pretty hard to view my life as a framework for happiness.  I grew up an unremarkable kid in California in the seventies, skinny and awkward.  I got mediocre grades, and didn't test well either.  I applied to UCLA and was rejected, which didn't seem like a big deal—my father assured me that "Someone with my street smarts doesn't need college."  I had no street smarts, just a father with a new family who didn't want to pay for college.  He did, however, secure me a job installing shelving.  The job paid $15 to $18 an hour, which seemed like a lot of money.  I could buy a nice car, my only real goal at the time.
     During twelfth grade, we'd walk into Westwood Village and get ice cream.  My friends would shoplift.  I'd head home when my friends started shoving Peter Frampton shirts into their pants—not because I was more ethical than them, but because my single mother couldn't handle a call from the LAPD to come get me.  Walking back from Westwood Village  I crossed Hilgard Avenue, where UCLA sororities lined the street.  It was homecoming week, and there were thousands of young women standing in front of their houses singing songs and generally looking like a cross between a Norman Rockwell painting and a late-night Cinemax movie.
      At that moment, I decided I needed to go to college and went home to write another letter to UCLA admissions.  I told them the truth:  "I am a native son of California, raised by an immigrant single mother who is a secretary, and if you don't let me in, I'm going to be installing shelving for the rest of my life."  They admitted me nine days before classes started.  My mom told me that, as the first person to attend college on either side of the family, I could now "do anything."

Scott Galloway,  The Algebra of Happiness:  Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning