Thomas "The Tank" Dade

I feel a lot of us from an early age are boxed into what society thinks we should do. We’re told what the right path and what the wrong path is. The right path is getting a trade or going to university so we can become a functioning working member of society. The wrong path is drugs, alcoholism and being a loser which eventually leads to Centrelink and/or homelessness. The problem I have here is where not given the chance to dream, if where still in high school and want to be an actor, a professional athlete, a singer, an author, a YouTube star it’s all considered unrealistic. Doubt gets put into our young minds, who has had the conversation either with themselves or with someone else and it goes like this “I would love to be a football player BUT there’s only a 0.0001% chance I’ll ever be good enough and lucky enough to get drafted” or “I would love to be an actor BUT…..”. It’s not that we’re even told these things directly, the doubt is just implanted in our young minds and so as result we never even have the chance of making these dreams a reality. Society tells us that it’s pretty much impossible to achieve our dreams and we should start looking at ways to make an income that are “more realistic”, we should be like everyone else and blend into society, otherwise we’ll become one of those losers. As a result our efforts are drawn elsewhere, we lose site of what actually makes us happy so we can pursue jobs that we may not be very interested in. All so we can earn money and live life the way society thinks we’re “supposed” too. But let me ask you a question, what’s the point of working and earning money if we don’t get to do what makes us happy? Why be miserable to earn money so you can live another day being miserable, working to earn money? Think about it, it makes no sense and so many of us do it! The problem is we don’t think about it and that’s because from a young age and throughout our growing teenage and young adult lives we’re told “this is the way”, we stop thinking for ourselves and our own realities of what life is, is made for us. We let go of that naive, ignorant but happy little kid who dreamed big all so we could become a negative, unhappy, excuse making adult. I feel this is why depression and anxiety is so common. Even as I right this, I myself feel like I’m being a dreamer who will probably get nowhere pursuing my dreams and I am and will be a loser. I’m 21 and still live with my parents, I don’t have any qualifications besides my personal training qualification which I never plan on using. But here’s the thing and this is important. Sure my future look uncertain, I may fail but you know what, pursuing my dreams and attempting to make them real is making me happy NOW, in the present which in reality is the only time that matters. Our dreams and what we want in the present is taken away from us so we can think about the “important stuff”, our futures. This thinking is wrong, the important stuff is what is making us happy now. Sure we all do have responsibilities to society and to others, this is true but don’t use those responsibilities as excuses to not pursue your dreams. So I encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself what do you really want in life? And from there create a plan to how you’re going to make that happen. Forget your age, your gender, your race or your socioeconomic status, these factors may add to the difficulty but that’ll only make the journey more fun. We’re all people and we all have the right to dream and to pursue our dreams, stop making excuses, stop being negative and start chasing.