I don't know

At a young age, we have always been taught to obey our elders, follow rules, get educated. We have always been taught to conform to society and that how society conveys us is important. We were always told to 'do this' or 'do that', but we never fully understood why we had to. We just obeyed and followed, mindlessly at times. Adults, at the time never finished when they commanded us to 'do that'. In reality it was 'Do that because that's how we used to do it (when we were your age)'.

We were told to respect authority, despite authority not respecting us. What do I mean by this? Let me paint a scenario. Let's say your father, who is the latest in a long line of men in the family that have been engineers want you to follow their story, prolong their heritage. But you do not want to be an engineer, let's say you wanted to be a scientist or a police man. Nowadays people have become more accepting, more 'okay, that's good', more objective in a sense. But when I was teenager, I would hear more realism. I would hear 'okay, that's good. But the job market is looking for...' I do not mean this to be in any way pointing my fingers at the previous generation, most of whom are our parents. I do not mean to say that we were not accepted for who we were or who we wanted to be, because in truth we were. We were accepted for our ambitions, our beliefs, culture. Of course, this comes after a grueling gauntlet of school, 'career counselings', book fairs, conventions, even family gatherings where we were shown not what we wished to see but rather what we had to see, the world as a workplace. The world is your oyster, we were told. We were not told however that this oyster comes from the same wet market the previous generation shopped from, now rotten and out of date. 

We were told not to waste time lollygagging with friends, with hanging out, with impromptu adventures in the cities, with pointless activities that had nothing to do with our future. The things you wanted to do were irrelevant to your life in the coming years, therefore do this instead. Go to college or university, get a stable job, get a home, a family, a retirement plan, a savings account, a good credit history. It's almost as if our life had been planned before we even get a chance to experience it. Again, I do not blame the previous people for this. In fact, maturely speaking it is a good idea, to have a plan for your life, to do everything by the book. You simply follow the rules, and you wouldn't have a single problem about your life. But some of us are not good at following the rules. Not bad people, just terrible at following commands. 

Some of us prefer to live life second to second, hour to hour, enjoying it while we can and when we can. Some of us prefer to learn in a non conventional way, not glued to your seat in a dreadfully boring classroom, but with experience. To experience the beauty and brutality of life. To feel the pain and happiness of love, loss, comedy. To be able to choose what we want to become, who we want to be with. To be able to smile sincerely, cry genuinely, laugh truthfully. The world is not just an oyster, it is the whole ocean. You can swim, drive your boats, jet ski's, even choke on it's saltiness. But it will always be there for you, ready to accept and embrace you for you.