"...Now I'm Scared"

By: Zen Pencils

"...Now I'm Scared."

  I, as a person, believe everyone living and breathing in our world has a purpose and we all have possibilities to do anything we set our minds to. As vague as this ideal is, not many aspects of life as a 21st century student and child has boosted my will to strive for much more than I believe I can do. Education, in my opinion, is within our grasps everywhere and anywhere. The school system has been truly a positive development throughout mankind's history; people generations before would kill for the type of education and privileges we are handed freely, but school is not the only facility of learning. Learning, by definition, is "the act or process of acquiring skill or knowledge" School definitely takes a large role of directing students and children to the right path; the path to understanding how important education and knowledge overall really is, but school cannot be the only lane in which everyone shall and can take to success. It takes more than large textbooks to teach a student that he or she is truly useful to society. Despite the incredibly illicit and violent reputation we have as a country, one thing many nations cannot take away from us is the amount of opportunities we have: we can reach success with or without school institutionalization. 

   This particular cartoon by Zen Pencils truly inspired me not as a student but as a thinker---as someone who cannot measure to the authorities' opinions and desires in the academic system. Maybe when I am out of the school system as well, my abilities will not satisfy or suffice to a higher employer or maybe my love and personality won't be enough for a lover, but I must understand that there are so many ways of living life, yet we aren't being shown that pathway. It's as like we are on a long, steep hike which seems to have only one pathway. While many walk along the path paved for them, you wonder how the hikers at the top of the mountain arrived there so fast---did they fly, did they run, did they teleport there?! They didn't follow the path given to them, and their steps show  very difficult obstacles, so how did they succeed? You disregard their abilities on how/why they got there so fast, so you continue to walk along the paved road. There are signs that frequently remind you that it is "This Way" or "The Right Path", but realistically that paved way is not for everyone; not everyone has the endurance, the knowledge, the will to get up that one track. You then witness the struggles and failures of others; these people are assumed to be weak or hopeless because they cannot go up the hike which is recommended to them. Did these "weak" or "feeble-minded" people fail to their own expectations, or the expectations of others?  Though my story cannot truly compare the struggles of overall human concept of success to a hike, it expresses the possibilities of everyone and anyone who is wiling to succeed.

   Malcolm X famously said "By any means necessary" in the form of aggression towards fighting oppression and segregation in the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, but for the millennials and up-and- coming generations, are we still being oppressed? Oppression, not in the form of brutality or violence, but the shape of  "a wolf in sheep's clothing", because we are being oppressed and subjugated by the higher officials; whether it would be managers, bosses, politicians, and even presidents. Darwinism also supports the idea that man will and has taken a step backwards instead of forward through evolution because we simply cannot improve a society that is based on violence, greed, and control. The same people making corporations and jobs do not want individuality and creativity, they want the students and people willing to do anything and everything he or she says, which is a slave, or in modernistic terms, a robot. The interference of a man with a conscious can affect a business; the way in how they truly get their money. People with conscious are the same people who have been killed or prosecuted: Abraham Lincoln (killed by an antagonistic Confederate), Malcolm X (killed by members of his own religion who found him to be too powerful), J.F.K (killed by an unknown suspect but remains to be reasoned for his exposure to US corruption), Edward Snowden (wanted for his exposure of US actions to invade citizens' private conversations), and countless more have been disembarked and engaged to retaliate from their positions to fight oppression, or it shall come to death somehow. These heroes and legends leave their name into our nation, not as heroes, but as individuals; as icons and brazen soldiers to an illicit government and life. Then there is the side which believes in order and guided pavements, where shall this take us?

    While ranting about the negativity of having to abide by institutionalization, what are some of the benefits and pros about this side? School is a large part of my argument, which I believe seems to become the one and only way to become successful in this life of various opportunities, but I do also believe that school was never and still does have good intentions. School teaches us students to become fascinated and intrigued by our involvement in society. School encourages us as individuals to be guided to a future which can benefit both society and man through his and its struggle. Just as school, the concept of education and higher knowledge is simply inspiring but cannot be assessed in a single-filed, mandatory way. You cannot expect students to strive extremely well in every subject because it does not define the goodness in mankind: we are not perfect. Will having straight A's on the piece of paper called a report card have such a dramatic alteration to my well being and life as a human being? If you live in the 21st century, it is true that you must abide by these restrictions. In the cartoon, it points on how the system of the world simply gives you a piece of paper showing others that you are capable of work. Are we so minimal, so low, so degraded that we as a part of the world must be given a piece of paper to enable others to believe I can and shall accomplish? Must I have a paper inquire letters and numbers like 4.0 or As to define who I truly am? I believe these grades and academic scores do show significance; it shows others what I can, as a worker, can do to please my boss, nothing more. This 4.0 GPA does not grant me access to explore the world or solve world conflicts, but grants me a chance at spending thousands of dollars years later in another facility which falsely replicates the realities of the world or to prove to an employer that I am a good listener. This is not of rebellion----not of the defiance to man, not of attacking man's wrong doings---but of the actions that should and will be taken as my own person to set ambitious goals and sail into the direction where I want my future to be . If a student, so overwhelmed by the rules he had been given by society, had accidentally made a mistake to not meet academic standards, is he truly a failure? Will the effect of a B on his 4.0 GPA cause atrocious, maniacal changes to how his life and expectations would be perceived? Sadly, due to the way society accommodates enslavement and manipulation, yes, his or her life will be affected due to academic lack-there-of. But the world causes us to believe that because we cannot succumb to such academic struggles, that we cannot become what we want; we cannot be innovators, the new Steve Jobs or the Bill Gates of our generation, for what, a couple of letters and grades that defies the true meaning to creativity, individualism, and difference? That is what is wrong with society: being out of the box or different makes us look like black sheep while we are all truly beautiful. Our creator, whether a man in the sky or a scientific theory, made us different and unique in every characteristic. 

    The fact is, we sometimes cannot suffice to the standardized beliefs of humans around the world. We have forgotten basic human rights, ethics, and beliefs to simply learning to please one another: to please your parents, to please your teachers, to please your bosses, and more, and what if you cannot reach their wants and desires? You are admitted into jail, or into a facility that degrades your value as a human. The picture above is much more than a tale of school institutionalization; its a tale of realization, adventure, born-again values, and life passed the single-filed line. It takes more than a piece of paper to accomplish success; it takes time, patience, innovation, uniqueness, and much more than just a grade that your childhood teacher gave you. The enslavement of man has never been uplifted because we have always been enslaved by the higher authority in which holds us inferior---this is basic, evil human nature as we know it. Understanding the values of life just becomes much more than getting grades, but to become a better me. To find ambition in oneself can be beautiful and explosive: the expanding of one's knowledge can go from learning new things everyday to trying new things everyday. One John Mayer lyric truly sums up my argument on the system "You read all the books, but you can't find the answers..." This line truly amazes me because it involves so much more than books: our society outlines textbooks and school to be the only specific way of learning, but learning is all around us. You can pick up a tremendous amount of intelligence through the works of your own curiosity. Instead of measuring intelligence by paper and pencil, one should measure intelligence through experience, creativity, and curiosity. President Roosevelt once said, "Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."

      In the end, it is up to you to decide what you want to be. Even if takes years and years to overthrow obstacles given to you by the standardized, modern world, you can be and do anything you want this life offers you if you have will, desire, and persistence to get it. Life is all around you, but instead of sitting in a chair, living life in repetition, you must grasp life everyday with bitter curiosity and defiance towards the tedious life we live. Many just live their lives thinking they have succeeded in life, but only work succeeded them. They live abiding by a schedule at school; waking up, going to school, study, then go to sleep. Then years later, they get a job, surprise, more repetition; wake up, get to work, sit behind a desk for hours, then go home to do the same thing all over again. Life is about grabbing the bull by its horns; you have to truly live through intuition, not ludicrous, through curiosity, not evasiveness. If you want to become a lawyer, train yourself to learn how to elaborate and speak to others---develop your assets as a lawyer, not as a worker. If you are planning to become a mechanic, fix that old car your dad couldn't---study its engine, from the transmission to the smallest fuse. If you want to be a writer, initiate priorities for you to improve in ways that no other author could and create stories no one has ever heard before! The world is full of possibilities, but how can we grasp these possibilities if it is locked behind the fence society found unbearable and inappropriate?