The foundation we are born to believe in as children is one filled with imaginary things— princesses, treasure, magic, happy endings—and the ultimate realistic thing… love. As children, we dream up crazy stories, say words that don’t make sense, and are definitively trusting of the people around us. Our parents would just nod and smile down at us, pretending they understood what we were saying. Then we get older, we grow up. The once fairytale place we thought existed in a land far away, disappears. The treasure buried beneath the “X” that we stood upon, vanishes right under our noses. The prince who finds a damsel in the woods and then marries her the next day becomes an absurd divorce case waiting to happen. It doesn’t have to be this way. Infinite possibilities are waiting to be sought out if only we’d have courage enough to unchain them. When we get older, the hearts that we had as children are buried six feet under by the standards of our culture and our world. The older we get the more standards we are expected to follow. So as the rules are piled higher and higher, our heart for imagination and blind love is being murdered. We are killing ourselves, and there is no one who will find us when we are gone.

How will you come out of the dark hole you dug for yourself? When will you say, “I don’t care what you think, I am going to do it my way?” I find myself running around in circles like a confused mouse in a science experiment. I know one day I will figure out how to live fully, but until then, which side do I choose? The side of the ones who stand alone and are different, or the side of the ones that stand together and move as one mechanical thing, with every part the same as the next? We are so focused on what other people want from us that we forget what we need to do for ourselves. We think like there is only one outcome to every problem, we are one sided and we strive for normality instead of originality. Why? Let me tell you, because what we want is to fit in, to be loved, and the easiest way that we know how to do that is to act like everyone else, be the same. But that isn’t going to make us happy, it is going to demolish what little individuality that we have left for ourselves, ruin the life in our hearts. We need not to strive for similarity, but to think for ourselves, form our own opinions. Who cares what your friends are doing? We need to take out the lens that says “This is what you should be like” and put in a new one that says “This is who I am.” If that happened our world would be twenty steps ahead of where it is today, instead of the one step forward, two steps back method we have been using. We could be a better world, but we are too selfish to be different.

Imagine a door surrounded by vast open space. You are in the front of a crowd of people with your back to them. You take that first step towards the door and the blank-faced clones stare back at you, they watch your every move with a critical eye, making judgments as they please. They all look the same, but you...you are different, you are the one who is taking that step, and they are the ones who will follow you. You and I, we can’t keep waiting for someone else to do what we can do for ourselves. We can’t keep expecting that it will all be done for us, thought out for us, served to us, we need to step away from the crowd and figure out that the world is full of new, innovative ideas. We were created to be originals, not copies. So why do we stand, poised, inches away from that door, the door that could lead us to a brighter future, one that we will make for ourselves, not the pre-made future that stands before us now? Do not be afraid to be yourself and risk the life that someone else has decided for you. Create the future, it is in you hands now. Go ahead. Open the door.