Overcoming Societial Pressures
a hack on life
I’ve always been a big feeler. In-fact, for a long time I considered my hypersensitivity to be a huge weakness of my own. It’s not so much that I’m the type of friend who cries when you’re mean to them or the type of person who’s really good at confrontation because of all the experience they have in the subject. No, I’m more of the type of person who internalizes every single emotion. There are mornings I wake up feeling as though I am no more necessary to this world than a US penny. There are other mornings I wake up feeling like the world is a claymation movie and I’m the giant hands and brilliant brain of the director and crew. There are even days I go from feeling to feeling without much feeling of control over what feelings I’m subject to feeling that day. Feel me?
We live not only in a society of immediacy, but a society of over-stimulation. We have facts and opinions and opinions stated as facts being shoved down every opening we keep unconcealed. It’s as if the modern world is a firing and crew of social ideals and our brains are the poor blindfolded victims awaiting death to our active consciousness. The world makes us feel in myriad ways. It makes us feel guilty if we’re successful yet, paradoxically is pumping our veins with the pressure to achieve some sort of social ideal. Go to college, get an internship, land your dream job, make a lot of money, get married, teach your kids to do the same. GOD FORBID you step outside these parameters. If you don’t go to college, you can’t get an internship. If you don’t get an internship, how will you find a job? My goodness and if you don’t find a job and make money, how the HELL are you going to be happy? I don’t care who you are or how free spirited you claim to be; we are all subject to this way of thought at some point in our lives. Maybe you’re even feeling this way now. If you were going to be a celebrity, you’d already be one. (Damn it, I hate that thought though. I’d make a bad ass supreme on American Horror Story). And if you were going to be a professional athlete, you’d already know it. So instead here we are; the seemingly average with superhero capabilities and no way of accessing them. Clap once if you know you’re destined for something bigger. Clap twice if you’re scared you won’t achieve it. Keep reading on if you want to know my opinions on societies opinions.
By societies standards, I’m a college drop out. I have a hard time explaining to people that I willing chose to remove myself from school one year before completing it. “Well, if you only had a year left, why didn’t you just finish?” Valid question. The answer is though, I was chasing an empty dream and I couldn’t do it anymore. I was throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars fulfilling classes that weren’t fulfilling me. Don’t write me off as a hippie just yet, hear me out. As senior year was approaching and those very real feelings of “what do I wanna do with my life?” began to kicked in, so did the very scary answer. I. DONT. KNOW. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life anymore so then than I did on the first day my freshman year in college and that scared the hell out of me. I started to feel like, this is a time in my life where I need to know who I am— not what I want. How the heck am I meant to know what I want with hardly any notion of who I am? And this, my friends is where society gets you.
For some people, the “normal” way works. For some people, going to school, getting the internship, job, and husband/wife works. But for me, that doesn’t work and I’ve finally realized that that’s okay. Life fools us into thinking there is only one way to happiness— but it throws at us a million plus ways in which to achieve it. The problem lays in our inability to separate the necessary thoughts from the unnecessary. The problem lays in our inability to see beyond societies ideals for us and create our own ideals. We are NEVER going to be help anyone, grow in anyway, or truly know what we want if we are following a pre-planned laid out map of our lives.
The world has 7 billion plus people inhabiting it. 7 BILLION. I don’t even know how many zeros a billion is. That being said, there are technically 7 billion ways to go about living life. Each of us 7 billion people are constantly sensing and experiencing the world around us, processing each emotion and experience in whatever way we best can. No two people will EVER live the same life nor experience the same experiences and emotions of anyone else alive. This being said, it doesn’t matter what path we chose to take because we can only experience anything within ourselves. We need to understand that society, while necessary isn’t what should dictate our notion of happiness. We need to understand that though we are completely part of the world, we need to separate our minds from it occasionally in order to truly find our own path. It is a conscious decision, the one to finding inner-happiness in this world. It’s a decision based on your choice to creating your own map, not following the one in your hand, online, or on your iPhone.
So stay awake and follow your passions, talents, and intellect. Only you know what’s right for you; no matter what society says. And when those thoughts come creeping in at night, making you feel guilty, anxious, or scared— remember the 7 billion. All 7 billion of us are subject to feeling anxious, scared, or guilty; but can all 7 billion of us consciously chose happiness over those emotions? I can’t speak for anyone else but myself, but I’ll tell you this: I’m a college drop out and I’ve never been happier in my entire life.
