Have you ever wondered why you were put on this earth? What your purpose in life is? It can't be going to school and working all your life can it?
As I ponder on all these life long, unanswerable questions, I seem to be forgetting one thing: “What is your heart telling you?”. We seem to forget to ask ourselves these questions at different times in our lives because we are too consumed at doing the task at hand and abiding by social standards.
Depending on where you live, social standards can be very different. This is the story of a 24 year old female who went to school for a good 17 years of her short life which includes elementary school, high school, a college diploma and a University Certificate. She currently works 37.5 hours per week for the Federal Government and gets paid a very good amount of money as a Business Analyst. Did she ever anticipate doing this in her life? No! Now the question is: “What does she want to do when she grows up?”
The beginning
- You're born, your innocent, you have the world at your feet
- You go to school
There's no question about that from the get-go.
She sits in a class-room full of 5 year-olds competing for the teacher's attention. She's read a story every day, she colors, brings home her achievements to be posted on the fridge for everyone to admire. She's proud, the world is at feet. She can do anything. She wants to be a teacher or a cashier at a supermarket. Her little mind isn't thinking about social standards or what is expected of her… she will become the best and she'll be rich!
“Someday dad, I'll be able to give you the life you always wanted because I'll be rich!!” she says. Never really understanding what right really meant. Does rich mean lots of money or does being rich mean being happy?
School gets a little harder, she goes through the bullying but still she has great hope for the future.
Entrance into an adult too soon
Then comes high-school where she has to deal with mean kids, raging hormones and so many temptations.
At this point, she still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but yet there's this un-talked about social pressure coming from all around (parents, guidance counsellors, friends, family, etc.) to be the best she can be and make lots of money. Like many of her peers, she is then forced to take classes which will benefit her future, whatever that is, because that's what the “right thing to do” is. She get through, what everybody says is the “best years of her life” and then she gets called into the Guidance Counsellors office where they sit her down with a whole bunch of college and university brochures expecting her to know, at 17, what she want to do for the rest of her life. They administer personality tests to best fit her career aspirations with the type of person the test says she is and what her parents want for her. Some of her peers get lucky and go for what they have always wanted to be. She'll realize later that it has nothing to do with luck.
What the future holds
September comes, and it's her first day in college. The building is so big; there are so many people, all of them incapable of helping her with directions since they don't know where they are going either. She get through her first class, her first week, her first month, her first semester and then she thinks: “Did I choose the right path?” By this time, her first year is completed and she only has a year left to go, so why not finish right?!
After two long years the day has finally come, it's graduation day!!! She is so proud yet so glad that all of this is over. In these two years she's met great friends and has started to accept who she is as a person, the hormones are dying down and she starts thinking of work. The only thing is, the college diploma she has in her hands is not what she wants to be doing with her life and her parents are pressuring her into University because a college diploma isn't good enough, and University is what “successful people” do after high-school.
After much debate and heated arguments, she once again decides to please her parents and entourage and she's back in school studying what she thinks she wants to be doing. Only this time, she doesn't even get through the first week knowing it's not for her, but the voice at the back of her head, formally known as “mom”, is telling her that finishing her schooling is the right thing to do if she doesn't want to be viewed as a University drop-out. She starts realizing some things. It's not about her not being successful in her mother's eyes, it's her mother being paranoid about what people will say about her and how she's such a bad parent because she has a University drop-out daughter compared to others in the family.
