So,
We are born. We go to school. We graduate. We Work. We marry. We have kids. We work. We work.

And then, we die.

That’s it. The ideal lifestyle we are told to follow. The supposed recipe to happiness that generations before us have enacted, with no real results. And yet, we continue to strive in a desperate, pathetic way to fulfill this mundane checklist of life. What’s in it for us? I ask myself  constantly, each time hoping that my consumer driven brain will come up with a better answer than ‘money’ or ‘a big house’.

I’m only just a little thing. Fifteen is an age of ignorance and pride, and no, I will not try to deny this because despite what my 15-year-old biases push me to believe, I have no reason whatsoever to defend my condition of teenager. It is true. We are idealistic and full of ourselves, as well as constantly fed with picture-perfect life scenarios provided by tumblr and instagram. Compared to those who have experienced the full blow of life, what do we know?

Nonetheless I feel the need to express the nagging in the back of my head, that this ideal lifestyle I have been taught to want, doesn’t seem so ideal to me. This doesn’t have to do with work ethic or compensation, nor does it have to do with a hatred of marriage or primary education. What bothers me is that the little things that are so ideal to me in all their momentary simplicity, have no place in this blueprint of life. The smell of rain on concrete, the flavor of a hot night, the way my newborn cousin wraps his hand around by thumb, what it feels like to step on a dry leaf and hear it crunch. In the large scheme of things we only seem to include big concepts like mortality, love, fulfilled dreams. My question is, who decided? Who was the genius that plotted out humans’ expectations with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Is it me, or is it just not that simple? It seems impossible to me that life is just one big story like that, because it isn’t! It isn’t a novel plot that you can write out during english class. I find that there are countless interwoven stories, and within them, like veins, are so many more that expand, rise, dive, some end in a halt, some continue to repeat themselves like thoughts running in circles.  It is impossible that so many events, moments, emotions, and experiences have been generalized into birth, work, marriage, work, kids, work, death. Its despicable how life has been reduced to this.

In Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, Quinn talks about our obedience to this plan as Mother Culture, a society that constantly whispers in our ears what we’re supposed to want, what we’re supposed to do. And even after we are conscious of this cunning, misleading Mother Culture we can’t seem to break out of her grip, we can’t seem to push away the instructions that are engraved in the skin of the soul. I think, because that grip represents everything we know, and it is scary to be willing to let go of everything. I mean, if you let go of everything, you will have nothing left.  Nobody wants to take that risk, to peek out of  Mother Culture’s protective hands . Or possesive grasp. Nobody wants to be left in utter uncertainty. I suppose people like being told what to do, even if its not what they prefer doing.

Alright, so let us say you read this post and thought of it what you did. How am I to end it? Would you like an over rated quote? Or perhaps an attempt to give you some wise advice that I don’t have? Really, what can I say, I can’t tell you to emancipate yourself from this designated cycle of modern human life, because I am too a prisoner of it. So tomorrow, you continue with your timeline, at whatever point of it you’re at. Work, school, marriage. But I do leave you with this question, If you’re the kind of person who likes to ponder…

Can you remember who you were before society told you who to be?