Second Class Citizen of the World

People always ask someone who's just finished school, college, or graduate school, "what are you doing after graduation?"

There's an implied and understood meaning that the person being questioned gets, even if it's not the questioner's intention. "You better have something incredible lined up, like an awesome career. Otherwise you've been wasting the last 20 years of your life and are currently heading towards a miserable dead-end life!!"

That would be fine... if that line of questioning ended there. Sadly it never does. People proceed to suggest the obvious, expand on how unhappy life will be unless the person does exactly what the questioner did with his own life, because they're so gosh darn successful and happy.
Sometimes I just want to scream that "YES, I GET IT, I don't have job lined up. And NO, I wasn't one of those lucky people born with a first world citizenship. So feel free to let me know just how horrible my future's gonna be if I just think about blinking the wrong way!"

It's already hard enough for someone young to deal with the pressure of having to decide what to do with their lives, especially when they're in a world with too much competition and the have the misfortune of being a second class citizen of the world. Telling them that the only available options to them are horrible, a dead-end, and must be avoided, likely is not going to help or do anything more than put pressure and make them feel like failures.

So, the next time somebody feels like giving unhelpful depressing advice, either don't or just consider the following question: If you were in their shoes and had only the same options they did, what would you want people to say to you?

Personally, I'd really like, "Wow, you've already done so much. You deserve everything good that happens. No, don't worry if you don't have plans for right away, it's perfectly fine. You have my love and support if life isn't perfect, but whatever you do just make sure you're happy doing it!"


I read a wonderful quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that I just think is absolutely how one should approach life, and frankly inspired me, gave me better advice, and made me feel better than everybody out there combined.

'If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well." ' (1967)

Yes I know. I'm having issues.

Cheers.