Growing up as a child, I often heard--as everyone else did, I'm sure--that I had the ability to be anything I wanted to be and accomplish anything I wished if I only set it as a goal. Even the President of the United States was a climbable mountain. Now, at the age of 18--mountains to be climbed before me--I am being beaten for taking to heart that which I was told. I dream; I am not allowed to dream.
I am to consider it foolish, out of the question, impossible. I refuse. Even now, they challenge my right to make my own decision. At first, it was simple: it is their decision, not mine. They have control over my name and what it signifies. If they do not wish that I go to Pratt, I am not allowed to go to Pratt. By the same principle, if they want me to A&M, I must go there. Indeed, I am nothing more than a trophy, meant to glorify their own names and social standing. They continue to be disappointed in me. Why? Because others will see the fault; others will see fault in the family; others will see fault in how they raised me. I do not go to prom, for example. There was no concern over whether I should go because I would enjoy it or not, but rather, what other parents would think when they found out their son wasn't going to attend the
most important social event of high school. It was blasphemy. It was a mockery. It was my own choice.
Now the matter is much more complicated. Apparently, the decision has left their own realm of action and moved on to a
greater one: that of God. None of us have the ability to decide where I should go to college. We'll have to turn it over to God. We'll have to pray over it. We'll have to let Him decide. The fact that I have already decided is negligible, of no more importance than a fly on a wall. Humans, being such
lowly and pitiful creatures, essentially lack the ability to make such important decisions, after all, and there is ample reason to allow another to decide.
There is no significance in that I have made up my mind. They offer to
speak about it. They speak of nothing. I beg them to consider the experience, the education, the prestige; they ask why anyone would want to travel so far. Though they do not say it aloud, they ask "why do you dream?" Even though I reply to this question and tell them of the future it could give me, they continue to let nothing pass from their tongues. There is too little money. We need a plan, after all, which is why it is good to form it now as opposed to when I was at the age of 5. I shouldn't dream so big. There are
more practical ways of doing such things. There is no reason why I could not gradually move up to a school such as Pratt. I should visit A&M; I should sway my mind. Why is it that I am not entitled to my own thought and decision? I know what I want.
What it all boils down to, it seems, is that my view of the world is entirely the opposite of my parents. According to them, there will always be people I must schmooze with and suck up to--must submit myself to in a shameless fear. Well, I refuse to give to anyone in fear. I need no names, no connections, no mindless parties with which to mingle with important people. My parents believe in a world where the currency is not money but men; a world where favors are traded for favors; a world were looters suck the blood from one another; a world of parasites. They live in a world where a charity organization throws itself a party in self-congratulation for its members' selflessness, and the members can drink themselves into a pathetic stupor, perhaps allowing themselves for one night to feel less guilty for the giant Hummer they drive. These people celebrate when they are not worthy of celebrating. They drink themselves into dire mistakes, endangering marriages and reputations. These are the important men and women of the world. These are the people I wish to never be a part of, the people I wish to fight. These are the people my parents find a necessary and important commodity in life. People with which no one can every amount to anything. With this people, one would amount to nothing.
Thus, I stand before this mountain, told I cannot climb up. I dare to go to a place where I have no connections, where I'll know no one and be forced to meet people worth meeting and avoid people who aren't. I wish to go to another part of the country, to find myself, to find the most important person in my world. I wish to go to create my future, to become one of the movers of the world. Yet. I cannot. I have made a terrible mistake, something that is irreversible. I have made the mistake of wanting to accomplish a goal few would be able to accomplish; I have made the mistake of dreaming.
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real_deal73's journal
cold
mellow
exhausted
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accomplished
stressed