The Right Way to Live
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What is the right way to live?
To work hard and try your best at everything you do?
Uphold the responsibility to your parents who have raised you from the beginning?
Experience the spontaneity of an adventure of a lifetime and live in the moment?
Plan your future methodically to ensure a safe stable life?
…
I don’t know.
I mean...
Everyone has their own way of living and what they deem is important.
For me, it’s always “I don’t know”.
Lately, I’ve begun to realize “I don’t know” is just an excuse for not wanting to make a decision. An easy phrase to go back to and blame my indecisiveness on.
You see, life is a series of choices made over the span of decades.
By making certain choices we are proceeding and growing into people with a certain set of beliefs and ideals.
These certain choices require sacrifice.
The sacrifice of less important decisions for more important decisions.
The catch is, you won’t know what’s truly important until you’ve made that sacrifice.
Consider this.
You might dream of living life as an adventurer. Perfectly content with living frugally and on the road for the rest of your life.
But your parents aren’t. They are against your ways and deem it stupid and illogical.
This is then a clash of ideals.
In this scenario, what do you value more?
Your lifestyle or the bond with your family?
It’s decisions like these that are the hardest to make and at times it’s easier to not make a decision and stay undecided.
But no matter how long it’s stalled, the decision has to be made sooner or later.
What will you choose?
In today’s age, people encourage themselves to live according to their own dreams and aspirations.
To move forward believing in yourself and your life.
But is that really the right decision?
I cannot say.
All I can say is when you start applying this idea to not only what your parents say but society as a whole.
It’s a different story.
Going against the idea of post-secondary school, working 40 hours a week, and what’s commonly perceived as common sense.
All of the sudden, the whole world seems ridiculous.
Now it’s no longer you against your parents, it’s you against the whole world. Against the world you were born in and know of.
Against all the ideas and advice passed down from generations.
Soon, it becomes obvious that this whole idea of having a job and even working becomes ludicrous.
And no one can understand what you see since they’re all in this system, this society where work is deemed necessary.
Nothing is necessary.
You don’t have to do a single thing in life.
No one has the power to make you do anything.
Only you do.
Now knowing that is a scary thought. Because you can literally do anything you want.
But, what scares me is the disapproval of people that I trust and deem important to me.
People who have the potential to hurt or make me doubt my own beliefs due to the bond we share.
Is it worth risking those bonds for selfish reasons?
Will I be more content playing along with the system and their so-called “rules” that everyone follows if it means that the relationships I have now with others will be preserved?
Or will I be more content following my own path and setting off on my own?
In a sense, I still have to pay back my family for the time and effort spent raising me.
I am indebted to them and it’s my responsibility to at least give them what they desire and deserve.
But then again, what do they want? I have no idea.
I really don’t. In the beginning, I thought that they would want me to earn money and help them out financially but I don’t know anymore.
Perhaps what they want is the best for me.
But what I think is best for me is not what they think is best for me.
So in the end, I guess you could say they want me to be their ideal version of me.
Unfortunately, that’s impossible.
Since they are not me.
So alas, I’m at a loss for what to do.
I think the root of all my life decisions comes from whether I should follow someone else’s advice or my own.
Unfortunately, I don’t like following someone else’s advice.
That’s the foil of my character.
There are days where I acknowledge that they are right.
But I’m the kind of person who wants to make the wrong decisions and see for myself if it’s the wrong decision before moving on.
I would rather do and regret than not do and regret.
It sounds silly.
But I’m stubborn like that.
If Carl here says it doesn’t work. I don’t trust Carl until I see it for myself that it doesn’t work.
I only trust my own advice however bad it may be.
Not gonna let anyone decide how I live life.
