Maybe I’m a fool
To settle for a place with some nice views
Maybe I should move, settle down
Two kids and a swimming pool
I’m not brave
One of the many quotes that has stuck with me since August 2016 when Frank Ocean released one of the most important projects in music history.
My interpretation of the quoted lines: There is a certain type of bravery required to follow the status quo. A bravery that Frank admits that he does not have. And that’s something I can relate to. I privy myself a radical, a rebel, a being that does not like to follow the system set in place. As a radical, I surround myself with radicals/rebels/aliens if you will. No one has been able to shake the molds by themselves. So if you have the guile to radicalize, find you some like-minded individuals. Take mental notes, hell take actual notes if that is your thing.
I for one am not the person to come to when a decision is to be made and you are thinking about abiding by what someone else laid out for you. Whether that is a career decision or a college decision. If you ask me, I am going to tell you to do whatever the hell it is you want to do. Know that this type of advice is not coming from someone raised in an environment that cultivated this type of thinking.
My parents encouraged the status quo. My father for one is the type of parent to look at what other parents are doing with their children and say “You are going to do XY and Z because this is what happened to their child and you are going to hate me now and thank me later for pushing you to do something you do not want to do.” I still have not figured out all of the damage that this type of thinking did to my mental but that shall be saved for another post.
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But with this being said, my father’s thinking certainly came from other cultures that had a foundation in that ideology and sort of paid off for them. I say sort of because I know those children who are now adults did not have childhoods. Their imaginations were slaughtered in elementary school but they are living in nice homes, driving expensive cars, and they make 6+ figures so those things are not a worry. But I considered the differences between their upbringing and mine. It is not at all the same and with one phone conversation with my father in August, he understood how wrong he was in pushing that ideology. He wanted me to be an engineer and he made sure to place that on my path as much as he could. From learning how to code by 7th grade to learning how to repair phones and even joining junior engineering clubs.
To be frank (pun intended), I did it all for his attention until I did not care for it anymore. While I did find a liking to technology, it was not enough for me to want to pursue a career in it. In hindsight, if I had a role model who followed tech and did not look miserable I probably would have taken it more seriously. One of my engineering professors in high school (I went to an early college) always look as drained of life as much as he looked like Santa Claus I kid you not. His life seemed like all he did was sit at a computer screen coding until his fingers were numb. That observation was one of the many wake-up calls to myself that I had to find a better way. A better way to be happy while following my passions.
