Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Scream!

I don't know where to go,
What's the right team?
I want my own thing,
So bad I'm gonna Scream!
I can't choose so confused!
What's it all mean?
I want my own dream,
So bad I'm gonna Scream!

- Zac Efron, Scream! (High School Musical 3 OST)

*****

I find it very strange how the movie I identify with right now is High School Musical 3. no, not with the crappy acting. And not with the romance. Though in my opinion the third was the best out of the three. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My point is, the struggle portrayed by the characters in the movie is real. I think it's something that everyone can identify with. In high school (I never went, but I had a close enough facsimile, okay? :p) it seems like everything is just that. Friends and hanging out, and relationships, and watching movies, is the way things are going to be forever. Or at least, the way things should be forever. Of course, somewhere in the backs of our heads we know that it won't be like this always, but we can ignore it.

Then it's graduation day (okay I never had graduation day either, shut up >_>) and it seems like everything we've come to know is falling apart. Friends move on with their lives and drift apart. You end up not talking to people you were inseparable from in school, making new friends, meeting new people. Old relationships fall by the wayside because you simply can't seem to maintain them. New ones come and then disappear like they didn't really matter to begin with. And suddenly you realise that you don't like it. Nothing's slowing down, everything moves by in a blur and suddenly, suddenly you're running out of time. Suddenly you have to decide which direction your life is going to go in, what you're going to do with it. You have to decide whether to go for your dream or settle for someone else's because theirs is safer. Because if you settle for the plan someone else has laid out for you there's less chance of failure and at least someone else to blame if you do fail.

I've said it before, but the future is a scary thing. There's no knowing what's going to happen. There's no knowing if you'll make it and all your dreams will come true, or if you'll fail miserably and end up doing a desk job that you hate every day, getting caught in that 7am traffic jam every morning and that 5-6pm jam on the way home. Looking forward to the weekend so you can get in more than six hours of sleep. Then feeling dejected on Monday because you wasted your weekend away because you were so tired.

*****

I've got a lot of things,
I've have to do,
All these distractions,
Our future's coming soon,
We're being pulled,
A hundred different directions

- Lucas Grabeel & Olesya Rulin, Just Wanna Be With You (HSM 3 OST)

*****

I think there's a point that every teenager reaches where they realise they need to make something of themself. That they can't stay in their safe cocoon away from the world forever. Some people take that feeling and go clubbing, go live it up, because hey, this is the last chance we'll ever get to be irresponsible, to just let go and be whoever we want before we need to settle for a mediocre job, a mediocre life, a mediocre car, house, job, paycheck. Some people work harder, they give up life. Because hey, life can wait, they need to focus on getting that job to provide for themselves. Sure they had dreams, but that was kid stuff, it's time to grow up now, dreams are for people who don't know anything about real life.

And then there are those people who just freeze. Because the future is terrifying. It's scary and big and nothing like they expected it to be. And they can't do it. They don't believe they can do it. So it's better not to try, because then they won't be humiliated by failing. They sort of flounder around from one thing to the next, not really trying very hard because then they'll have an excuse when they don't make it. "Oh I didn't want it anyway. Didn't really try it." They'll never get the opportunities, the system is biased toward other people. Why try at all?

I'm a lot of the third. Paralyzed with fear because the future is so big. It's so much more vast than you ever thought when your world was high school. It looks so difficult because suddenly, you have to be adult. You can't do what you want when you want. You if you're going to amount to anything it has to be now. If you have a dream you have to go for it now. The pressure is enough to scare anyone. For me, it's that I was homeschooled. It would be easy to miss out on the opportunities to go fro my dream. And just everything together, pushing down can freeze me in place.

Lately I've been just moving, doing something. People say that the only way to conquer your fear is to face it. So I that's what I've been trying to do. It's hard. It's hard when you go to work and it sucks. It's hard when you feel tired, but you still have more to do. It's going to be even harder when college starts again. But then, people also say no pain no gain, right? Haha. It doesn't make anything less scary. There's always the fear that your boss won't like you. The fear that you'll mess up on the job and get chewed out by your superior. Always the fear that you'll never amount to anything more than this, that the promotions will always be given to the other person and you'll be stuck in your same dead-end job for the next twenty years. Always the fear that no matter who thinks your voice is good you won't make that recording deal because you don't look good enough. Always the fear that you'll never get those acting opportunities because you started too late unlike some people who started when they were five years old or something.

Truthfully I'm scared. That I won't make it. And I haven't been trying as hard as I should. And it's easy to say I'll do it later. But suddenly I feel like I'm running out of time, and suddenly the inspiration isn't there. It's like all the feelings that overflowed into song, poem, and story so easily before suddenly stopped. I think the scariest feeling in the world is running out of time. Because you blink, and suddenly you're old, you're old and all those things you wanted to do, you can't anymore. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a mortgage to pay. And you need that paycheck to keep paying installments so that your house isn't taken away. You're chained to a life you hate but that you can't escape from.

I think what it boils down to, is which fear is greater. Fear of failure, or fear of never amounting to anything. It's easy to hear people talking about taking that shot, so that even if you fail you know you tried. But doing it is more terrifying than anything you've ever done. Because your life rides on this decision. What you become now is what you're going to be for the rest of your life. And that, is a scary thought. My dad says if you try and fail, you can't be called a failure. Real failures are the people who never tried.

I don't wanna be a failure.

*****

This is the last chance to make our mark,
History will know who we are,
This is the last game,
So make it count,
It's now or never

- The Wildcats, Now Or Never (HSM3 OST)

*****

I know that everything is scary now. I know that I have no guarantee that any of my dreams are going to come true. But I think I need to start moving. If you start walking, even if you don't know where you're going to end up, you're going to end up somewhere, right? That somewhere could be off the edge of a cliff with your head broken open, but at least you know it was your choice, right? Better than never making a choice.

Bruce Lee said, "If it kills you, it kills you." So I need to move. If I die? I die la. There are worse things. I don't want to never amount to anything. I think I'm tired of trying to be an adult, tired of trying to be "realistic." Tired of second guessing myself. I think for awhile, I'm going to be naive. I'm going to be like when I was kid. When you just had to imagine it and you could whoever you wanted to be. The Power Rangers, Superman, Barbie, a My Little Pony, whatever. Even if our friends said "No you can't be the Black Ranger, he's short and you're too fat!" You'd be like "I don't care I'll be the tall and fat Black Ranger." No one could put you down, you believed with all your might that you had it in you to be whoever you wanted.

I think that's one thing all us teenagers need to get back. Belief in ourselves. We're so sidelined and pressured these days to be so many different things, that we forget who we want to be, who we already have it in us to be. And we settle. Settle for something less than what we wanted to begin with. I think we need to start believing in ourselves, and just do it. I know I'm making it sound so easy when it's really not. But then, since when did we ever do anything the easy way? We have relationships and hide them from our parents, we smoke, go clubbing and break out necks to everything we shouldn't. Why should this be anything different?

I want to amount to something. I want my dream to come true. So I have to do something. No matter how scared I am. That's courage, right? Being afraid but going for that thing anyway, whatever it is. And now for the one bible verse I've ever put on my blog:

*****

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

- Deuteronomy 31:6


*****

I think we gotta do whatever it takes to get what we want. No one's gonna give it to us, we have to take it.

Who's gonna stop us?

*****

I'm kicking' down the walls,
I gotta make them fall,
Just break through them all,
I'm punching, crashing, I'm gonna,
Fight to find myself,
Me and no one else,
Which way I can't tell, I'm searching,
Searching, can't find a,
Road that I should take,

- Zac Efron, Scream (HSM3 OST)

2 comments:

Liz said...

I think you've got it, Jare. Courage. You've always struck me as someone who possesses that. Even if you are scared, you come around. You search yourself, and you find a way to be happy. So don't be afraid. Know that everyone goes through basically that same thing. You can do whatever you want still. I guess as we grow older, the trick is to never lose that courage that we used to have or allow ourselves to be bogged down by petty things that may 'freeze' us. Good for you :)

Joyce said...

well said, jared. i feel exactly the same way too. however, i feel that there's more to life than just trying our best and going after our dreams. ultimately, if God did give us a desk job which means getting stuck in traffic jams everyday, we would be gladly doing it if it's according to His will. only a very very small percentage of us will end up living exciting lives such as an artist, actor, singer etc. but a mediocre life is abundant too if one is flying high with God. :)