Do You Live YOUR OWN Life Or The Life YOUR FAMILY Has Preordained For You? YOU Decide!, Part I

This is a thought to ponder. How many of you are actually living your own individual lives? Now, think about it thoroughly! Smile if you are living your life on your own terms. You are instinctively aware when you live that kind of life. You are alive and look forward to each day! You are living life at an intensity which very few people dare to do!

You are indeed a fearless person. You do not believe in following the dictates of your family nor the rest of society. You make your own rules and have your own gameplan. The way you live may have others looking quite perplexed at you while many more wish they were living your life. You are part of a small minority of people who refuse to live life by others' rules.

Then unforunately, there are the sad majority. Yes, I said it! Many people are afraid to break the mold whether it is familial or societal. They lead lives of quiet desperation. Even though they yearn to live a more exciting and colorful life, they portend that they cannot. Why? Well, they have some subconscious script which they must adhere to. What script? Many people have some type of script implanted into them either by their family, religion, and/or society that there are certain rules and pathways that they must follow.

These people are actually quite apprehensive of going on their own individual path for fear that their family, peers, and other associates will not understand nor accept them. There are people who are afraid to be apart from the crowd so they reluctantly follow the societal script whatever it may be in order to have a sense of belonging. To many people, belonging is the most important thing even it hinders their own growth.

Many people furthermore believe that it is much easier to follow someone's script than to be original enough to devise their own script. They are of the opinion that what is good enough for the majority is good enough for them so why invent yourself. They often "choose" the job, career, and/or lifepath that were "chosen" by their parents and/or family members. If they do not follow the dictum of their family members, they often adhere to the said script of their peers, associates, and/or socioeconomic/cultural group.

Many people are quite loathe to depart from their respective group script because that would be unsafe, especially if no one in that said group selected a divergent path. To reiterate, many people prefer to be in their safe cocoon. Also there are rewards for doing and adhering to what the majority does.

Furthermore, the group whether it is family, peers, and/or society use overt and covert methodology to make an so-called errant member follow the group construct. For example, a person wants to go into a field/area which is so diametrically different from that of the majority of the group. Instead of the group members encouraging and praising him/her for being fearless and fierce enough to follow his/her individual path, they want him/her to follow the preordained script to go into the field/area that they are in.

There are countless people who are in jobs/careers which they only function perfunctorily in because their parents, family, and/or other members "advised" them to go into those certain jobs/careers. These people do not love their jobs/careers and proverbially view their jobs/careers as prison time or earthly purgatory until their retirement. You can tell when people are just meandering in their respective jobs/careers. They are performing their jobs/careers just "well enough" not to be terminated.

Many more such people in such jobs/careers subconsciously perform in such a way as to eventually led to their eventual termination. It is a psychological fact that if a person either does not like or hate his/her job/career, he/she will not perform at the optimum level. Subconsciously, he/she will approach the job/career in a quite lackluster fashion. Furthermore, he/she will do things which betrays his/her lack of enthusiasm for the job/career.

To illustrate this, I recall my mother telling me that a surgeon dictated to his son that he should follow in his footsteps but the son did not want to be a surgeon but a fireperson. Well, the father would have none of it. He felt that his son being a fireperson would be a personal affront to him. So he forced his son to attend medical school in order to be a surgeon. Well, the son graduated from medical school, underwent internship, and had further specialized training. During the son's tenure as a surgeon, things did not proceed well so to speak. While the father was a brilliant surgeon, the son was quite the opposite. Well, the son was told that he did not have the wherewithal to be a surgeon. The son become a fireperson and quite an excellent one at that!

Another example of this behavior is one father actually planning his daughter's schooling and career. This father did not have the opportunity to further his education beyond the 9th grade level. As a result of this denied educational opportunity, he wanted his daughter to have all the opportunities he did not have. However, the daughter wanted to go on her own path. This father wanted to be a lawyer but the daughter was interested in more creative pursuits.

The father did not understand why his daughter would want to chose such pursuits which he deemed to be futile. The daughter wanted to be a fashion illustrator and writer. That was all she talked about. She knew that she wanted to be thus from the time she was 5 years old. As a child, she would endless sketch and write scenarios about what she had sketched. She was quite good!

In fact, she was so good that she won writing and fashion illustration contests. Her father was horrified at this, he wanted her to "become serious" and to "stop the nonsense" so to speak. He started to deride her talent as being a waste of time. She wanted to attend a fashion institute in Paris but her father would have none of it. He insisted that she attend a prestigious Ivy League college, majoring in pre-law and to proceed to study law at the graduate level.

This dissention was a constant subject of argument between father and daughter. The daughter apparently was not happy studying pre-law and graduated with a B average. She informed the father that she did not intend to attend graduate school but is going to study fashion. The father exploded, insisting that she was definitely going to graduate school because he paid the tuition. So she relented but to quite dire results. She performed so poorly at law school that she was kicked out! The father was horrified but she was relieved. She eventually pursued her passion!

What many parents and/or other family members fail to realize that their individual family members may have desires and passions which are different than others. They believe that as authority figures, they should advise their family members as to what is best for them. Well, there is news for them- it does not go that way! Your children and/or other relatives have an idea what they want to do with their lives. Even if they do not, they must find and discover their own path and/or their own passion. The parents and/or other authoritative family member cannot do that for them.

There is nothing worse for a person than to have a parent and/or family member discourage what they are passionate about and/or have an innate talent in especially if the talent and/or passion is in an area or field which the latter deem to be "unrealistic" and/or "impractical." A noted triple threat celebrity portend that she was extremely lucky to have parents who avidly encourage her passion to be a singer/ dancer/ actress. She further elaborated that her parents never told her to get and/or settle for a "real" and/or "more practical" job. She stated that there were fellow celebrities whose parents and/or other family members derisively told them that what they want to do was totally futile. She stated that this was totally egregious behavior on the part of the parent and/or other family member. Many people settle for less and are not what they could be because of such parents. They live half-lives of utter desolate regret.