Choosing My Life

I have chosen to stray from the life that was expected of me to carve my own path. Growing up, every time someone tried to tell me how to be successful in life I had the distant thought that something was wrong with their advice. Sure they meant well, but the context of their advice left me with a lingering feeling of doubt. Conveying this thought has always been a disaster because I was either too immature to understand it, or too afraid to admit what I knew to be true.

My life until now has been in preparation for a career that makes me lots of money. Perhaps attending the best schools, getting the best grades, and pleasing the right people along the way makes you successful in the end. That is if you define being successful as making more money than the Joe next door to you. Just like growing old is only relative to how you feel about yourself as you age, being successful is only relative to how you define success. If being rich is what drives you (as it used to drive me), then do what you have to in order to make more money than your friends and relatives. Just be honest with yourself. Nobody can tell you what makes you happy, that is something you have to find on your own. Surprisingly this process was much harder for me than I would like to admit. The fear of disappointing everyone close to me is still hard to overcome. The disapproving faces are always going to be there.

I would be lying if I said I came to this realization overnight. The move to live my life the way I want has been resonating in the back of my head for almost three years, and very soundly for the past year and a half. With this foreshock brewing behind each of my thoughts, I do believe tonight I made the leap that broke the focal zone of my mind, releasing the earthquake that I’ve been subconsciously trying to prevent.

What brought me to my epiphany was a simple idea that I correlated to my life to help me define why I knew there was something wrong with the path I have been pursuing. It is widely accepted that kids who are allowed to drink and party at their will, as allowed by their parents, are less likely to revolve their lives around drinking and partying when they are older. The fact that these kids are not banned from such activities, or punished when they do stumble drunkenly into the house after a night with their friends, makes them see these activities in a different light than their classmate who wasn’t even allowed at a friend’s home because that friend’s parents drank alcohol with dinner. The opportunity to become successful has always been there for me. By following the advice of my parents, friends, and respected elders, I opened up the doors for a life I thought I wanted. I was never told I could not do what I wanted, because I always did what other people wanted me to do.

Part of the reason I spent the last three years of my life in denial of my true desires is because it was an easy way to live. I never could have imagined how hard life can be when you have people doubting you and telling you “No” every time you turn the corner. I’m laughing at myself now, after realizing all this only an hour ago, because the idea of living to be happy has been laid out in front of me on many occasions. The mixed feelings of stupidity, honesty, and fear can only make a person laugh at themselves.

There is still something that bothers me though. Would I have made the same choices long ago if someone had told me I couldn’t do what I now know I want to do? Would this have made me rebel and change my course in life just to spite those who told me I couldn’t do it? Whatever. I’m here now, and there is no turning back.