(no subject)

[trinsy]

We are not our parents. We live in a different world - one where college degrees are common, jobs rare, and marriage optional. One where there's not as much pressure to stick to one path for the rest of your life. One where you aren't necessarily expected to be married and popping out kids by the time you're twenty-four. One that is a bit less limited and a whole lot scarier. We are not our parents. We can't be, and we need to stop trying.

I keep having to remind myself of that. I've got one semester of college to go, and I'm terrified. When my mom was my age, she was married and had a career path in mind and knew what she wanted to do with her life. And you know what? I don't know what I want to do with my life. I haven't got a clue, and even if I did, I haven't got a shot at a career with my current qualifications (or lack thereof), and I couldn't be further from marriage if I joined a nunnery. And everyone tells me this is fine, I'm young and it's good to have my options open. The world is my oyster. I can do anything I want, have anything I want.

You know what I want right now? Stability. Security. I want to go to bed at night with the assurance that I won't spend the rest of my life living hand-to-mouth in some studio apartment working a minimum wage job. Sure, it's nice that I have "options", except that isn't one of them. I don't have a guarantee of anything: career, job, family, house, nothing! If the world is my oyster, it's one that's keeping tightly shut. I'm secretly an optimist, so I'm about 90% sure there's a pearl in there somewhere (on a good day; on a bad day I'm convinced there's nothing but sand), but I don't know what it looks like or how to get it. I'm scared and directionless and you know what? Sometimes I wish I lived in the world of my parents, because maybe if there'd been more pressure on me to find some direction at this point in my life, I'd have worked harder and discovered something I could do for the rest of my life, even if it didn't make me completely happy.

That's the problem with our world, really. We've been conditioned to reject anything that won't make us happy. I know I couldn't live with myself if I ever settled for less. But honestly? Sometimes I wish I could. Sometimes I wish I could settle, because frankly, I haven't been happy for twenty years. I know I can deal with that. And maybe it'd be okay if I were suffering for my passions, but I'm not. I don't even know what my passions are! I don't even know if I have any! But I've been conditioned to not betray them, even if they only exist in theory, so I'm unhappy and directionless and passionless and poor and terrified, and I can't even guarantee I'll get anything out of it.

Comments

[darthkit.livejournal.com]

Ideas can be changed. People can be reconditioned. Does that make either easy? Nope. But if the outcome is something that benefits you and a slew of other people, it might be worth fighting for it.

Just pulling a quote from my quote wall that I think might be relevant:

Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it. ~J. Petit Senn.

(forgive me if I start to sound preachy at any point, I won't take offense if you tell me to stfu)