When’s the last time you really thought about what you believe in as a person? Better yet, when’s the last time you asked yourself why you cling to your morals and the ideologies that you dig your feet into the ground to stand for? Because your parents said so? Because your coach, your pastor, and your friend say you shouldn’t carry that belief?
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there’s no guide to living your life, contrary to what we’ve been guided to believe.
You’ll hear all kinds of reasons as to why you should live your life a certain way…a good one you’ll hear a lot is that it worked for others to live by the book; so therefore you should too. Garbage. You also hear the condescending notion that one way of living is better than another, which drives me up the wall! People fear uncertainty and what they don’t understand, but what fun is life without taking a gamble and doing what you want for yourself? I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be living in regret if I were straight-edged, mister average.
I don’t mean any disrespect to those who have influences in our lives; I value teachers, parents, and coaches immensely and what they add to our development. However, I think it’s important that these individuals should aim to inspire kids to think on their own rather than instilling their own beliefs into the young and impressionable. No matter what you have in mind for your life, I don’t think it’s looking back to see all the rules you’ve followed. Live a little.
It can be an uncomfortable feeling to go against the crowd at times, but isn’t that a problem in itself? Why is it that our instinct is to fear being the black sheep, to fear being a free-thinker in a sea of conformity? While it sounds cliche, I think you’d be hard set to find a free-thinking individual who lives in fear of the world and its consequences. Instead, they keep their head on their shoulders and live the way that they want. Sounds nice, huh?
Let me ask you this — what are you afraid of? Afraid of finding yourself or finding yourself condoning different political and moral ideologies than others? Forget what people think. Do you. Anyone who judges you for being a little different isn’t worth the worry anyway. Whether it is high school, college, or even life after, people will constantly be coming and going. Jobs change, people move, and life happens. The people who tend to stick around in your life are the ones who accept you for who you are; the people who you had the guts to speak your mind to with them doing the same.
Conformity is boring. Can you imagine how different the world would be if we all embraced our true opinions and ideas? What we see now is the tip of the glacier for all the potential creativity and individual expression the world has to offer. In a free-thinking society, we would be engulfed in a variety of perspectives and open-minded people who could offer their personal insight to the problems at hand and encourage well-rounded and knowledgeable ideas that could do the world good.
Conformity is pressured and drilled into the people systematically. Let’s change that.
