Decisions
I think it's really amazing how we insist on putting labels on people or defining people. Maybe that's how we work as humans, to help us understand others, we have to put them in a box with reference to us so that we can relate (or not relate) to them.
Last night I was having dinner with the coaches I work with for the track team I help to coach. One of the men made a bet with me that by ten years I would be 1. married or engaged, 2. have a kid or seriously thinking about it and 3. have a mortgage. Maybe I will have all of these things or maybe I will have none or maybe I will have 1. He said assimilation is unavoidable. What a pessimistic way to think about life! I mean, marriage and children and mortgages are not bad things but I am not assimilating to them. I better get married because I love my partner or have children because that is what I really, whole-heartedly want. And having a mortgage, it's not necessary. Maybe that's the formula people have or had in this society, but you don't have to live that way. You can enjoy your life and not "assimilate." You can be happy renting a house in a different city everywhere in the world, for a year or two at a time. Or you can decide that you don't want to have children. Or maybe marriage isn't for you, and solitude is what you prefer.
Life isn't about assimilating or making decisions because it's time to because society deems it fit. I think you should live your life according to your personal beliefs and level of comfort with the decisions you make. What a miserable life it would be if you just went along with the motions that society demanded of you. Caving to social pressures is easy but I don't think that it's necessary, yea people might give you a hard time, trust me, people give me a hard time about the way I live my life all the time. But at the end of the day, when I put my head down on my pillow to sleep, I am subject to my conscience. My conscience can be happy with the way I am living my life and the decisions I have made and I can sleep peacefully knowing that I have been true to myself. Or I can put my head down on that pillow and suffer the questioning and re-questioning and thinking and re-thinking of the decisions I made and didn't make and am truly unhappy with.
It's all about decisions and having the strength to listen to your heart.
