Contradiction of Life

I was wandering between two contradictory thoughts on how I should live for these three years, since I came to the US for college.

One is to keep pushing myself to make efforts so that I can grow as a person for the future.
For example, keep revising my papers,  do more work than necessary in a team project, and learn more English words although I do not really need to if I only care about getting a degree.

The motivation for this thought is that I should at least learn something and give something back, since I got a chance to come here with a lot of support, which not everyone in my home country can get.

This way of living is rewarding when you get the results. However, it contains a lot of pain, loneliness and feelings of betrayal in the process.
At one point, you would ask yourself why you are sacrificing so much of your lifetime doing painful stuff. You thought you were doing this to live more happily in the future, but who guarantees that doing this will make you happy in this world where anything can happen?

The other thought is to enjoy the current moment by giving love to others and receiving it from them as well.
For example, eating yummy food and talking with friends, spending time with your family, and having a relationship with  your partner.
This way of life consists of many little happiness chunks, instead of getting one big happiness at the end.

But at some point, you would start to compare with others who are “better” than you and realize that this happiness might not go on if our life stage changes.
You cannot guarantee consistent love from another person, because you cannot control other people’s emotions.
Your happiness somewhat depends on others.

Ideal

Of course, the ideal life could be somehow combining these two, and getting a sense of self achievement while feeling love from others.

But in reality, at least for me, this balance can easily get messed up.

When I care too much about personal achievement, I tend to take complimemts from others as superficial and feel that they are avoiding the issues by saying positive words.
Although that is partly right, I also need to receive the positive emotions that the person is trying to give to me in this case.

On the other hand, when I want to have a fun and easier time, I often ignore the reality and stop accepting new values because it is energy-consuming, which always ends up with me regretting later.

Ideally, I want the rational reality and dreamy emotions to exist at the same time from different routes, somehow taking the best of both worlds.

How I should deal with this contradiction

Probably, the most approchable way for me now is to have some time periods to dedicate to personal achivement so that I will be able to give more love to others in the future, and to insert different time periods between them to express the current love and gratitude.

I still fail a lot when trying to do this, but I want to keep thinking and being honest with myself at least, and hopefully I will be able to live a life both for myself and others.