Mar 6, 2011

What Defines Who You'll Be The Rest of Your Life

Recently I heard someone (around my age) say something really, really stupid. This person said that who you are in highschool defines who you'll be the rest of your life. At first I thought this person had seen some highschool drama movie or sitcom and was quoting from there, but sadly it was not the case. It was a case of truly believing that the experiences of highschool, and whether you were popular or not, a good student or not influenced greatly on the rest of your life and your personal success. To add insult to injury, I must add that this person works as a teacher in a highshool.

With concern I have noticed how this message is sent to the population through movies of all sorts and all kinds of popular sitcoms, and teens are subjected to these. In momenty like this I can't be more grateful of the path I choose, remain Childfree, or I would have to deal with kids traumatized everyday with this sort of mental crap. It's particularly mean to divulge such false statements precisely to such a sensitive population as teens, specially coming from grown up that should know it's not true.

People always seek to get a glimpse about their lives, know if they are gonna be rich, successful, happy and all that. A lot of games and rituals are invented to try and earn a glimpse of this future still to come. I don't know how many of you know this - certainly some of my friends do - but I used to read cards as well as hands. I believe that if I basically "tune" myself to some tool, I can read the future from anything. Gift or developed sense, who knows, but as such I know also that whatever I see is only a possibility of the many laid ahead of the person I'm reading. The future isn't really a thing written down, but on the writing, where even if God holds the pen, our hands have the tip of the pen and can choose a path that suit us better. I believe the will of God and the path God has chosen for us to be broader and more free than we usually imagine it to be.

Highschool, in many places, is indeed a really difficult period where people go from children to teen - not yet adults - and seek desperately to be adults. It is the time when insecurities are the strongest and the opinions of others tend to form the opinion of oneself. All this already heavily aided by the constant bombarding by the media about teen-years being the time of confusion. Also this is usually the time when people become more aware of their sexuality. But is it the time that defines who you'll be for the rest of your life? Not at all. As a matter of fact, people tend to become something entirely different from that they were. Not always the opposite, but something different.

As you walk your path through life, you certainly find milestones that form the person you'll become, though that person is hardly ever fully formed, unless you decide to stop building it. Highschool's importance lies basically on your preparation to enter university or to take whatever step you take to define who you'll be professionally. Your grades, your studying, your choices set you on a professional path and define where can you go from there. But whether you are the school's laughing stock or the most popular one, the prettiest or the ugliest, the saddest or the happiest, it doesn't really matter. Not one of us can tell you about how the super-hot cheerleader captain ended up with no profession, fat, ugly and breeding kids. Or how the quaterback is the new Physical Education teacher, and still roams the highschool looking for his old glories now burried under a beer belly. Not one invisible kid is remarked now as the CEO of some important company, now traveling offshore, while the King of the Prom ended up working in some call-center now as the oldest phone-guy mocked by a generation of vampire-kids who cruelly laugh at how he things himself so hot flapping his grayhaired, dated bangs like some reject of an old movie.

As a matter of fact, not even what you do in college, or how you live your University days bear any mark for the rest of your life. Truth is that the only thing that defines the rest of your life is your attitude. Plain and simple. It's always time for a change, if you want a change and are willing to do it. But really do it, not only the threat or the mockery of a change only to fall again into the same. If you studied engineering in your young days, and now you realize you'd be happier with chemistry, go and do it! As long as there's a will, there's a way.

Nothing determinates the path your life will take, nor the success and richness you'll have, but yourself. It's all up to you, so grab hard the tip of God's pen and decide, where's your life going to go.

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