BENEATH

Success:

To laugh often and much,

to win the respect of intelligent people

and the affection of children,

to earn the appreciation of honest critics

and endure the betrayal of false friends,

to appreciate beauty,

to find the best in others,

to leave the world a bit better,

whether by a healthy child,

a garden patch,

or a redeemed social condition;

to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded! ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once again, I do not expect anyone to know what they are looking at here.  If it helps at all, we are looking up at something.  You could say we are "beneath" it.

It seems to me that there is a "socially acceptable norm" when it comes to the proper order of the events one partakes in throughout life, and what deems a person "successful" and it goes roughly like this:

• Attend school and graduate without getting arrested or pregnant, preferably with high grades.
• Attend college and graduate without getting arrested or pregnant, preferably with high grades.
• Find a job requiring the degree you now have that is full time and gives benefits, unless you are in Michigan and then you just take any job you find.
• Work way to hard for way too long, and realize you don't know everything.
• Find a person to partner with whom is deemed acceptable by your family and friends and who also does not pick their nose or leave the toilet seat up or have unusual hair in weird places.
• Marry said person in a ceremony approved of and paid for by both parties' parents.
• Buy a home you can('t) afford.
• Feed the dog, mow the lawn, do the dishes.
• Have a baby and learn that your life is now happening according to a schedule acceptable to this child, but loving every minute of it.
• Raise your child(ren) to do all of these exact same things.

There is not a damn thing wrong at all with following this order of events. 
But not everyone does, and it does not make the people who do any better than those who don't.
My life has gone much the same way.  I don't have a degree, but I do have more credits than some people who do.  You see, I started college thinking I wanted to do a certain thing for the rest of my life, and quickly learned through a series of events called "life" (death of my Grandmother and a close friend, dating my future husband, and moving out of my parents' house, to name a few) that I was headed in a great direction, but not the right direction for me.  And that whole job thing?  Well, I had a great paying full time job with benefits at a great company.  And I walked away because the most important job in my life became raising my children.  I work part time and that works for me.
I still would like to finish my degree, and it is just a little out of reach for me right now, but that doesn't mean that I'm beneath those that are there.
Eventually I'd love to go back to work full time, and I can't reach that yet either, but people who do work full time are no better than me.
And I look at my husband, who has never attended college, yet makes more money than many people who have degrees.  He just simply doesn't know what he'd want to study, and since we don't have a plethora of extra time and money, he isn't going right now.  He still provides for his family, and I appreciate him for it.  But the most important thing he gives us is love.
Some people have said we aren't as "successful" as we should be.  They say we struggle more than we would if we were finished with college before we had kids and maybe on certain days that's true.  But I've never met anyone who doesn't have bad times once in a while, whether or not the have a degree, whether or not they have a great job, whether or not they have children, and despite the order they do it all in.
Success is measured in many different ways.  But weighing our own personal success against those of others doesn't make us beneath them, at least not in my book.  And if they disagree, I've only got one thing to say:

Get some perspective.