Life is funny because it is totally unpredictable. Like the weatherman predicting rain for this entire week only to have the sun beam beautifully every day, you can have expectations or even "sure things" planned in your life, but it really only takes one second to change it all. Even right now, before I finish this post, my phone could ring with great news about x, y, or z and I would be on top of the world; or it could ring with bad news about the health of a family member and I would be devastated beyond reason. Between the moment the phone rings, and the moment that I actually hear the news, my entire life could be changed. And that is why life is funny - because the only way to figure it out is to live it.
The world is funny because the world doesn't know what it wants. If the world was a man, I would describe him as hypocritical, indecisive, or dramatic. I think of two phrases here, "less is more" and "silence is golden." In recent years these phrases have helped me to bite my tongue more often than not, and I'm glad for that. I have realized that you add more value to what you say, based on the infrequency with which you say it. Like paper flyers used as advertisements, anything that is too frequent becomes routinely tuned out. I've also come to believe that you should not proclaim things that have not yet come to you. Again, less is more and silence is golden. Not to go biblical on you guys, but there is a gospel passage where Jesus tells us that when arriving to a table with two seats open, leave the one to His right side open, and sit in the seat at the far end of the table. Better to sit at the far end and be called to the Lord's right side, than to sit near the head of the table and be told that you are in the wrong chair. Ok, I'm done with analogies, I think you get the concept by now. My point is that I don't think the world plays by these rules. The world thinks that any time he has something on his mind he can say it, without reservation. The world is a flake. He sets these standards and expectations, he tells us to abide by a cultural code and how there is a common path we all need to travel. But then he also encourages us to walk off the beaten path, and define our own destiny. The world has no concrete values, he changes them based on each and every situation, to the extent that if we as people rely on the world, we are stashing money in a bottomless pocket. And that is why the world is funny - because he is the first to talk, but the last to act.
Another thing that is funny to me is how as I've gotten older, I've started to place more value in the meaning of Disney movies. For instance, I'm pretty confident that as we age, we all can understand pretty well why Peter Pan doesn't want to leave Neverland. Who would want to leave Neverland? Simply put, Neverland is the shit. To leave is to become part of the world, part of a system, part of the man that always talks but never acts. My intent here is not to exaggerate, because I know that there are countless men and women who are more than happy with their lives, who are successful, and who have great families. That being said though, there's nothing quite like Neverland - there's really no rules, no stress, and no settling for less.
I firmly believe that the world has norms because he is insecure. We create standards as a society because we are too afraid to make our own decisions. Then, we get so accustomed to those norms that life carries on as plainly and complacently as Pleasantville. It is at that point when the world changes his mind, and he tells us to be different. He tells us to fill ourselves with color among this world of black and white. He tells us that we should be breaking the mold.
The truth is, I agree with the world on this point. We should be breaking the mold, because that is truly how evolution is implemented. One generation uses the norms of the previous generation as a foundation to building their own brand new norms. That is how animals and bacteria evolve, so why not us? Well there is a significant problem with the evolution of humans - the ego. Animals and bacteria can evolve easily because it seems to be a purely natural process rooted in biology. Our evolution as a species is rooted more in our intellect than anything else, so our emotions naturally become involved. The most keen observation I've made in my life is that more often than not, the people who walked the road before us don't like it when we try to walk further than them, because if they couldn't do it, why should we be able to? And so that brings us back to Pleasantville, where everything is black and white, and life is the way it's always been.
The core issue here is that most of us have lost the ability or awareness to break the mold. I think for that to change, we need to learn how to break our own personal molds before we worry about the societal ones. That brings me back to my fork in the road - a fork that I'm sure people graduating from any level of education (or life for that matter) face more often than not. The fork of "where do I go from here?" There could be two paths in front of you, or there could be 20; so how do you choose? We receive all types of influence while staring down the fork in the road - influence from friends, family, mentors, and the world himself. The world tells us to dream, but not too big; to challenge ourselves, but not beyond reason; to avoid paths that are too safe, but also ones that are too risky; and to do something we love, but only if we get paid well for it.
I'm starting to believe that the world wants us to be "different" then the norm, but only the type of "different" that exists within the norm. And if we want to be more than permissibly different, the world tells us that it can't be done because it hasn't been done that way before. What it comes down to is that I think we have lost track of what it truly means to be a pioneer. The people who created the acceptable form of today's "different" were making it up as they went, probably to the tune of many nay-sayers. So what is the bigger challenge for today's emerging adults? Is the true test the one that has you travel a direction that you've never walked before? Or is it the one that has you find out if you have what it takes to master one path before jumping to another?
Maybe, just maybe, the boldest step to be taken by anyone at a fork in the road is to walk down the path that you can hear calling your name. And to others, this path may be too safe, too dangerous, too plain, or too complicated; but that's why they get to choose their own paths as well. The people who we look to for guidance and wisdom got to where they are because they followed the wind down the path that they knew was for them. So perhaps it's helpful to gauge what our mentors might see; but at the end of the day the best way to truly break the mold society has placed us in, is to face our paths on our own, listen for the wind, and simply start walking.
