“Because life is dodgy and pointless might as well make the best of it and experience different things.” This was one of the answers that I have received when I started executing the idea of this article, oh and “I just want to feel free”. I created a google form and sent out the link to close friends and requested they send it around, keeping the age limit 13- 19 years old. Because in my very humble opinion a 21 year old university student in these specific years we think we have it all figured out, but our thoughts are almost very far from the truth. Sometimes, they hit the nail right on the head.
Answers shortly started to stream in my inbox, while reading them as they came I felt like I’m having a microscopic look into the complicated chemistry that is the teenage mind. A research was done recently stating that almost 85% of parents don’t really know what’s happening in their child’s head. There could be many reasons for this one of them could be lack of communication including lack of understanding on the opposite side, in the rare occasion that a teenager wants to communicate with their parents they feel like they won’t be understood even ridiculed at some instances; due to their lack of experience or struggles parents under-look their issues and almost never validate them, which could create a lot of self doubting issues in the future, but what do I know i’m just a couple of years ahead of them.
“Being remembered” was a floating theme among the answers received, it was quite captivating how they viewed it in a way that to feel complete after death your name has to be carved within something that people remember you by. Crafting one’s name in history is indeed a difficult task, but in the answers it was shown as something very much capable of achieving and perfecting if it is making people’s life “easier”.
“skydiving”,“ visiting the ocean” due to the peace that’s associated with it, one answer compared death to the ocean stating that we don’t know much about both but we tend to fear them anyway. Or maybe they could have been very subtly quoting harry potter “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure”. Travelling was a big answer as well, even in our troubled times nowadays travel is very much an unattainable luxury, but they believe that the next chance they get they will catch that flight to anywhere but home. “Honestly i just want to be proud of myself”.
The answers that I have received were all brilliant it allowed me to reflect on my thoughts at the time and take a real look at how different i view myself now than back then, one that stood out the most that I would like to close out this article with ;
“I have a great desire to do something good, but I’m not sure why. Maybe to prove i wasn’t wrong for those who thought i was in the past. Maybe to make up for my mistakes, maybe to prove that when i took a step back it was because i had to, not because i wasn’t good enough”.
Thank you to everyone who submitted an answer.