A conversation about the future and education with a former colleague churned out the following conclusion about many Malaysians (or should I widen the scope and include people in general as well?):

We spent our entire childhood and teenage years doing what our parents and society thinks is best for us, and then suddenly when we hit our mid-twenties, we are expected to KNOW what is best for us just like that. Is it any wonder why we then decide to just “do what everyone else does”?

During our years of schooling, be it primary or secondary, we were told where to study, what to study, how to study, what to wear, how to eat, how to play, how to behave, who to befriend, who to look up to, and so forth. We learn that it is always better to rely on someone else; first, because they know better and secondly, because it was only natural. Some of us enter our college and university years with this cycle behind us. Our parents decided what degrees we ought to graduate with because they knew what would be best for us.

And so we find ourselves following orders, taking our path wherever it took us. It never occured to us to consider other alternatives because over time, we learnt through conditioning that our needs are trivial and hardly appropriate. So, we just…listened and obeyed.

Then one fine day, it happens.

You are an adult now. It’s your life. You decide what’s best for yourself.

And you wonder, maybe even get yourself confused; you ask yourself this: how the hell would I know what’s best for me when all my life I have been told that my desires and my needs AREN’T what I need? You just spent a good twenty-five (or less/more) years pleasing others, putting their desires and needs ahead of your own and suddenly you are expected to know yourself well enough to decide what’s best in life for you.

Is it any wonder why people just give up and follow the norm? Is it any wonder why people hate their jobs, themselves, their partners and hell, even their life?

If we wanted to encourage our children to be passionate, creative and enthuasiatic in life, what should or would we do as parents, individuals and as a society? Where do we draw the line between supporting and spoonfeeding?

After all, do we really know what’s best for someone else?