“What if all I want to be is a park bench made out of wood, sitting under my favorite tree, its shadow kissing me, while I just sit and watch people all day long, their lives burning away, sometimes on my lap, their joys, their sorrow and anguish all mine for those brief moments” – Me
It is a little scary when you realize that you are sure about the fact that you are unsure about what to do in your life.
There are times when you decide to take a step towards some life/career goal and then stop from moving further, because you don’t think you really want to do it. It is so sickening to see people being pushed into a certain unwanted direction due to peer and parental pressure, so sickening that you secretly feel good about the fact that you are not in their position. But are we really always secure about where we ourselves really are?
Every now and then we call the bluff of people we know. How we know that a certain friend had a terrible vacation with his or her family but decided to post picture perfect photos of them partying at a club you cannot afford. Nobody posts about the mid-party fight, the drunken brawl someone decides to have, the mental abuse that everybody is subjected to by a disgruntled drunk member of the family. Everybody just seems to be happy. And we know the fact that every now and then we do the same thing too. Posting pictures of us locked in embraces, not the tears that might follow soon after.
A lot of people are caught in a vicious social circle where one is expected to perform for the expectations of friends and family and even people one does not care a damn about. We are all expected to be sure of what we want, draw a certain expected career and life graph and slowly work towards achieving various milestones. Get a job, get a promotion, get married, buy a house, buy a car, have children.
But there are so many of us who do not want that job or that big promotion. Some of us shit our pants at the mere thought of marriage. All some of us want is to buy a tent and spend all our evenings in the woods. There are others who are working at reducing our carbon footprint so they carpool or cycle. Some of us don’t really give a damn about the earth’s problem and prefer cycling to ever buying a car anyway. Some of just want to have dogs or be left alone than have a child. And then there are the rest of us who are not sure of anything. But why does it have to be that big a deal? Because it is. Because most people who try to control our lives are people who would not spare a dime if we go bankrupt. And yet we let their views affect our world.
And that is why I know it is scary when you realize that you are sure about the fact that you are unsure about what to do in your life. But it is okay to not be sure. Because we are not anybody’s property and we have the right to be who we want to be, even if it is a nobody. Or just a wooden park bench watching people burn their lives away.