SelfPub: If a person refuses...

If a person abandons his ambitious plans and becomes on the same level with the "gray mass", is it fair that he has to pay for this with a sense of shame and even guilt? Or are the levels of prestige nothing more than an illusion, the same carrots that are pulled in front of our noses so that we forget about freedom of choice and blindly follow where the powerful of this world want? By giving up a dream career and starting to be content with little, does an individual automatically become a nonentity? Or does he himself have to determine the height of his significance?