Being an Individual Within Society

Society shapes and forms who we are as human beings from the moment we come into this earth. Society has dictated certain norms, certain accepted ideals that people are expected to follow. If not, many times we are exiled, banished to solitude. So most of us have taken the beaten path and have folded to the demands of society. We have accepted the life that we are pressured to lead. We have turned out backs on our inner selves in order to “fit in” or to “advance” along the ladder of society.

We are told from childhood that in order to be happy and to succeed, we must reach certain goals in life. We must get a good education, at which point we must get a good job, where we are then supposed to move up the ranks in order to achieve a management position. Then we work as hard as we can to retire at a decent age of 65 so that we can finally spend some time doing the things we have always wanted to do. This just seems backwards to me. Should we not instead be focusing on what our heart is telling us right now in this moment? Should we not be following this feeling inside of us to do the things that we know we are passionate about, and to do them to the very best of our abilities? Many happily successful people say over and over again that you must not worry about the money. Just do what you know you can and want to do, do it to the best of your abilities, and the money will follow.

I think this is a very true statement, however I think that this path is the path less traveled and many times it takes a bit longer to get to where you are trying to go. There will be obstacles in the way, there will be failures that seem to completely destroy our hopes and dreams and it is at these obstacles that most people turn around and head back to the beaten path. It is at these obstacles that we grow the most as human beings and figure out even more about who we are. These struggles are there to keep the unworthy out, to only allow the truly passionate to pass.

You might be very good at following the beaten path and you may think that is the quickest way to happiness. I myself have been a very proficient navigator of this beaten path. However, what happens when you get to the end? What happens when you reach the end of this beaten path and you have all the money you would ever need, all the power to allow you to do anything, and a beautiful lover if not to emphasize the fact that you have succeeded along this path? Many people who have succeeded in the eyes of society are actually some of the unhappiest people on earth. The reason being that they have spent their whole lives chasing a goal that society put out for them, expecting that to be their happiness at the end of the rainbow only to realize that this is the goal of society, and was never their own goal as a human.

Stay true to yourself and live your life with the highest level of integrity possible. Make the important decisions that your gut tells you should be made. If everything you do is for the others around you, you will lose sense of who you are and will become a shell of a person, full of the desires and characteristics of the people around you. Just be yourself as much as you possibly can and you may very well find that the most important people you ever meet will gravitate towards you. This is a strength that can only be developed within and that will take you to new levels you never imagined possible. I will continue to follow my heart and will face the upcoming obstacles with a sense of excitement, rather than fear. I will push through so that I might be able to draw my true self to the surface so that others around me will see that it can be done, and that it should be done by all of us.