Since middle school we were taught to get the best grades possible so we will be ready for Advanced Placement classes in High School. In high school we were told we needed to have a high GPA, be involved in extracurricular activities, volunteer, take leadership positions and get exceptional scores on SAT and ACT so we would be accepting into college. It is absurd how students are expected to go to college. My senior year I was asked what colleges I had been accepted into, where I had applied, and where I wanted to go so many times that eventually I started to tell people I did not want to further my education and their reactions were disgust and astonishment, which is ridiculous and irrational. In college we are taught and prepared for further education or the career we choose. Once we are in that chapter of our lives I imagine we will be expected to do our best and more to get promotions so eventually we can buy houses, support families, and conform to the perfect society.
In the United States society has created a world where people are expected to excel at the current task in order to begin the next task. Vacations, the few times a year that should be about enjoying, have become a train ride. People rush to their location, not enjoying the adventure of getting there. Once they are there people want to see everything, visit every site, get the most out of the money that they worked so hard for, not ever taking the train anywhere just stepping off for moments and not ever really experiencing or enjoying the moments that they are stepping into.
In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert contemplates the idea “What if you step out?” and “Where would you sit at the family reunion? How do you mark time’s passage without the fear that you’ve just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant?” People want to be happy and I believe that what people are taught to strive for in the end will make them content with the life they lived. Society has taught us that family brings the most happiness, barbeques and beach trips are what we live for. According to the current scholarly consensus parents are more depressed than non-parents and parents of infants and toddler are extremely unhappy. If this data is true then why do people rush through the time of life that belongs to them not enjoying it in order to reach the next period that is not about them. Human kind is an evolutionary species, the strongest survive, and we learn from our elders, who sit at the head of the table tell us stories that we one day hope to have. The modern world has evolved immensely within the past century. People just have not learned to evolve with it, which is sad because they only have one chance. Years ago people had children to work the farms, bring in extra income, learn the family skill. Children enhanced happiness because they made life easier. In modern day children are expected to be driven to sports. They want technology and are expected to enjoy life while they are young and still can, before they have bills, mortgages, careers, stress and children.
That is the answer! Enjoy life, every moment of it. Some bills are unavoidable, but mortgages, careers, stress and children are not. We live in a modern world, a world full of opportunity and dances. People need to dance to their own beat, the one they create. The one that will fulfill them, not just leave them content, but leave them in awe. The answer is different for everyone and it’s truly depressing that people have not realized and excepted this.
Virginia Woolf wrote, 'Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword.' On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where 'all is correct.' But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, 'all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.' Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous. It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection (Gilbert, 95).
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