When you start listening to people talk about the future the main thing that always comes up is AI. “Robots” are going to take over the world and leave us without jobs. Honestly that’s not the thing that scares me the most. What scares me is how we are addressing that issue. By creating our own human robots to compete with the real thing.
We give parents and kids a blueprint to adulthood. Tell them what to say and how to act. We tell them to, “grow up, act your age!” “Oh you don’t think like us, you’re weird!” “You just want attention, stop trying so hard, why can’t you just be normal?” “Your parents must be so disappointed…”
So without further a due here is the blueprint to life that society has imprinted on our lives:
Step 1: Get a degree!
Will you go into massive debt to pay for college? Maybe.
Will you walk out with your dream job? Probably not.
Will you compete with thousands of graduates for the same internship position? Absolutely.
Let’s be honest most of us walk out of college book smart but, a complete idiot when it comes to applying it in real life. Making your degree USELESS! On the other hand, if you didn’t spend money you didn’t have on a degree that you don’t use, applying for high-paying jobs is almost impossible. This forces us to fall in line and follow the path that has been laid before us.
Step 2: Work 9-5
If you finally obtain your dream job congratulations. You just traded 40 hours of your week for money, sleep deprivation, and anxiety. So let’s just get one thing straight, the 8-hour workday was invented by American labor unions in the 1800s. People are still working those same hours just because we’re accustomed to it and it’s what society expects of us.
If there is one thing COVID-19 has taught us is that you don’t need to sit eight hours a day in an office to get your work done. A study done in New Zealand showed that by giving their employees one day extra off in a week without lowering their pay made them 20 % more productive and happier.
If this is the case why are so many of us still exchanging our happiness, and quite frankly, our sanity for a job we tend to hate?
Step 3: Dreams come after you retire
Whether it’s backpacking through Southeast Asia, getting a motorbike, or going bungee jumping, how many items are on your bucket list that you keep pushing for “when I have time”, “after I get that promotion”, “after I retire.” Our dreams become an afterthought – something we can still do after we work.
The sad reality is that only a few of us actually retire and have funds to sustain that retirement. Some keep pushing away their dreams to simply never reach a point in their life where they can pursue it. Another reason we don’t like thinking about our bucket list is that some of us simply never reach retirement age or are in any physical condition to go bungee jumping at 70. This leaves us with a bitter older generation hating millennials and wondering, “what if?”
Step 4: Now what?
So my question is now what? What are we actually living for? Why do we follow the restrictions placed on us by our family, friends, and community? Why do we feel like outcasts and weirdo’s when we refuse to bow down to the “norm”? Maybe it’s just me but, I feel like the world needs one long-a$$ vacation and society, you need to chill!
She's Not Lost 