Finding your own path and how classic rock helped me find mine

Everyone at some point must decide what they are looking for. That unreachable, and oddly ambiguous, goal known as success or happiness.

As a student, and a hard-working one at that, I realize that academia is where my future is. However, is it in the realm of the Harvard, Yale, Princeton or a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere? My family history insists that I follow a career in either engineering or medicine. With absolutely no choice in the matter, and even less passion for those fields, I am completely lost.

Why do I try so hard to follow something that I care so little about? Why do I sacrifice my social life in the name of academics? Why do I act the way I do?

And then, as I dozed off to the endless perfection of the Disney Channel, I was gently woken by the sounds of an AT&T commercial. Obviously, AT&T had little effect on me, but it was the song that I noticed.

Day Dream by Wallace Collection

Despite the ridiculous nature of the video, the entrancing vocals and simple beat are intoxicating. As I laid in my own filth on an undersized futon, covered in an awkwardly colored throw, I realized that I was wasting my time. Sometimes, you just have to day dream. The weather outside was incredible, 75 degrees, sunny, and a slight breeze from the east. Why hadn’t I gone outside before to see the sky? Why was I ignoring this glorious opportunity sitting in front of me?

It was simple. I had never tried to see what options I had before me at any time. Instead, I looked at what people told me to do. People told me I should have been studying. I should have been napping in a park, or in my backyard. I should have been living. The nose to the grindstone life of the average honors student is no way to live. A day with no homework is the highlight of my year. Now, I have promised myself 15 minutes per day of daydreaming, hopefully amid flowers, and on a beautiful day.

Later, I realized that there was alot more information hidden in the words of the hippy era.

Next, I visited the tunes of Buffalo Springfield- For What It’s Worth.

Stop, children, everybody look what’s going down.

Buffalo Springfield apparently wrote this song about riots that were occurring near them at the time. Thus, they are stopping to hear the sounds of chaos. They continued on to apply it to the nation as a whole.

As a teenager, I’m completely oblivious to everything around me. I don’t pay attention to any of the shenanigans that surround my environment. My town has homeless people everywhere. I’ve never been able to empathize with their pain. I’ve never been able to empathize with those around me. I don’t feel I’ll ever be able to either.

Instead, I have an irrational habit of blaming it on them. Sometimes, children are simply not raised with love, and end up in horrible situations. It isn’t there fault. The credit crunch has ravaged the housing market. Foreclosures everywhere. All the while, I simply spend my time analyzing how limits are used in Calculus. It seems kind of asinine, and it is. This generation is ignorant of everything around him. There is a war that is basically forming a schism, leaving the Muslim and Western world on opposite sides of the field, each looking for a head to shoot. Still, I’ve never seen anything outside the West and my home country. I have no relation to the “enemy.” They are abstracted down to nothing more than a blank face on a terrorist’s body. How do I empathize with that?

How do I make everyone happy?

With the help of the quirky comedy of Juno (Clever, yet cliche` at the same time. Quite a feat in my opinion.) and the cinema classic, Forest Gump, I realized that everyone needs somebody to love.

Here, I realized that life can be abstracted down to a series of relationships between a person and everyone that person interacts with. Some of these relationships are over in an instant, and others last for a lifetime. However, the length and value of a relationship is defined by the work or effort you put into it. Thus, any relationship can be shifted from one sphere to another, instant to everlasting. The quality is completely decided by the members.

Before, I took relationships for granted. It’s not that I was completely socially ostracized, it was more that I didn’t actively attempt to maintain relationships, be they between random study group members or the girl who works at the restaurant I frequent. I had hundreds of acquaintances, but few that I would consider real “friends.”

Once I started working on my relationships, I instantly connected with a woman that I have been talking to for months, but never really took to the next level.

I have a new good friend, who I party with nearly every weekend. (He’s one of those unstoppable social butterflies, and honestly, I can’t keep up. I spent one day with him, and met 6 new people that I would now consider friends, without ever leaving his side…)

Basically, I started trying.

Finally, I realized that I need to relax.

Shit happens. You can’t turn back time, at least not yet. Take things in stride, and immediately continue. Reflecting negatively on obstacles is hardly a good use of time. Negativity only begets more negativity. I am not necessarily one of those people who champions the idea of a “positive attitude,” but nobody can deny the fact that negativity and stress provides no real advantage. Let things roll right off if possible. Nothing is ever really worth it.