The Right question is: "What does success mean to me?"

 When I grew up we were all supposed to be a success in our lives. Then I watched people die one by one with or without college degrees. Why?

Because they never really asked the questions: "What does success mean to me?"

But, along with this the question becomes: "What can I do that I can LIVE with?

Because in the end it's whether you can survive your life this is the whole thing.

If you cannot survive your life then it is all meaningless.

So, what can you live with and be happy enough to keep yourself alive and relatively happy?

If you don't ask the right questions you won't be alive very long, especially not past 25 or 30.

So, in some ways I look back at my 18-25 despondency and realize these bad times in my life helped me survive here to 74. 

How? Because the closeness with  psychological physical death allowed me to see things in a way more selfishly. In other words as a child you are subservient all the time (at least you had to be this way to your parents in the 1950s and early 1960s. Not sure about now. So, breaking away and having your own thoughts was likely a much bigger deal then than now.

So, if you lived your life for what your parents wanted alone you likely wouldn't be alive past 25 or 30 in the 1960s and 1970s.

Unless you found a way to individuate then by the 1970s you were going to be dead soon (or wish you were).

Being pragmatic enough to do: "Whatever it takes to survive and have a life you can stand to live in the end is the ONLY way anyone lives to old age really." 

Otherwise you are just another member of the "Living Dead" of humanity. Then once you figure your own stuff out you can then begin to help others more in life. But, if you don't first learn what you need to survive you cannot help anyone because you just auger in and die slowly or quickly otherwise.