In the past I read a lot about the difference in how kids who could afford things and kids who could not tend to look at the future and how it fundamentally lies in the idea that the former have choices and have been taught to understand their value while the latter don’t.
Like it happens with lots of things, the notion of this difference was intuitive from the get-go but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I deeply understood all its implications and how it manifests. That’s simply because just this year, at 29, it finally occurred to me, to reflect on the mereconcept of choice in this context.
That led me to the realisation, the problem has not even been that my choices were limited or non-existent, but that I did not even understand what having choices meant. I had, in fact, never even engaged with the issue or been made aware of the discrepancy. I just blindly did the things that would maximise my chances of survival and not waking up in absolute panic every day.
Perhaps I did compare myself to other kids who were living their choice-conscious lives sometimes, but that still gave me very little insight as my condition just was; I never perceived it as injustice and I know why and it was because I thought I had lots of time ahead and I could not understand my condition was and will have been part of my identity. I always had faith in my capabilities and the youthful optimism that something good will come my way here and there, I do not recall ever feeling envious. You may call it blissful ignorance, but it was actually pretty awesome and kept me away from Marxism.
Sometimes people think if you started working and having to be responsible at a young age, you are most likely going to grow up a wise, responsible and mature human being. It’s very hard for me to grasp this notion.
In my choice-concept-oblivious past life I never felt mature or superior or inferior to my peers — I was just existing. And now that I managed to finally get to the point where normally teenagers start off (thanks to their parents safety net) I feel like I just got out of school and I can finally focus on picking my career path. I feel safe enough to fail and full of energy — finally, I’d add.
Needless to say, s̟̳̅̆ͫͮ͝͡ȍ̸̧͓̲̻ͥ̚͠c̵̥̺̘̿̏̅ͥ͡ì̸̢͇̝̳͍̟̬̠͟ͅe̹̫̬͖̘̙̽̃͠t̤ͫͧ͑̐͝ȳ̳̦ͯ̈́ͧͤ̚ disagrees with me because from the outside, I am a settled down adult and change is not only beyond expectations but also highly discouraged at this point.
As I have been finding it hard to explain my life-path to people, I will from now on use my t-shirts as a benchmark and say that I literally care about my t-shirts more than I care about my job. As in that I’d prefer to lose my job tomorrow rather than losing even only half of my t-shirts (my least favourite half). Because my job and career just kinda happened out of necessity, while I picked every single one of my t-shirts with extreme care. It’s undignified but true.
Are my job and career very different from what I would like to be doing? How can I even know that, I just warmed up to the mere idea of having choices. From now on it will take me a long time to realise what is that I actually want to do.
I do not want kids and my chances to live up until my 80s (that is almost three times as much as I have already lived and mildly terrifying) are pretty high. I am not even sure what I am expected to do in the upcoming 50 years but it seems like my time to figure things out is over. That is a ridiculously short time if you ask me and the rationale behind it is beyond me or rather, simply does not apply to me.
I wish there were more space for people who could afford to start growing up only later in life, which are usually the people who, for mysterious reasons, are expected to have grown up quicker.
Isn’t it more logical that having to cover your basic needs all by yourself at a young age does not make you more mature than your peers, rather it has the potential of making your weirder, less emotionally developed and more unaware of your self-worth than average, even if simply due to the fact you had limited time for introspection?
However, my t-shirts are the coolest and I am proud of this fact.