You can become president of the United States. When you are little listening to someone say this to you, usually a teacher, or a TV program or your parents or relatives or older friends of the family, it is very innocent when they say this to you and your little friends. Then you grow up and graduate High School and find out this isn't really true for the majority of people in the world.
The truth is much different. The truth is sort of more like this:
1/3 of the people on earth will survive and succeed no matter what!
1/3 of the people on earth will survive and succeed given the right circumstances
1/3 of the people on earth will not survive or succeed no matter what happens.
And this is actually the truth about mankind.
So, the top 1/3 who are survivors and who will be successful no matter what
and the 2nd 1/3 who will survive and succeed given the right circumstances rule
world and watch the bottom 1/3 as they fail in all sorts of spectacular
and not so spectacular ways.
Which 1/3 are you?
You don't necessarily know this at 18. You might have some sort of glimpse of it.
But, you don't necessarily know.
When I graduated High School at 18 I was hopeful of my future. I had wanted to drop out
of High School at 17 when my senior year began mostly because I had grown up too fast.
I had started working at 10 with a paper route, worked almost all the time after school,
summers from age 12 at various jobs as well as after school often as well during the school
year. I had bought my first car one month after I turned 16 and had gotten my driver's license in
Southern California, Glendale the day I turned 16. I got a 100 percent on the written test and forgot
to signal when I drove away from the curve so I got an 85 but still passed easily.
I was on my way. I cut school sometimes to go surfing and always got my mother to write me an
excused absence. But, this was kind of how I stayed sane through high school. I would go surfing
with friends in my surf Wagon, a 1956 Ford Station wagon that was a two tone blue and white car.
It was 1964 when I got my license. Then I went away to a private school my senior year in High
School which showed me something about what college would be like, where people are nicer
and more grown up and more gentile. And all the crazy ones who beat people up for getting good grades and brought weapons to public Junior High and High school to maim other people mostly weren't there in college.
I found not graduating from high school but the summer and fall after high school to be the most terrifying time in life. The questions "What are you going to do with your life?" and "What college are you going to?" and "What happens next for you?" burned me because I saw this moment as why so many people I had known about tend to self destruct after high school or just get married and give up and become garbage men or mothers right away for the rest of their lives.
The DIVIDING LINE had demarcated us all and many would die now because of unrealistic expectations. The statement, "You can be anything you want when you grow up!" would kill so many of us directly and indirectly while the top 10% might actually achieve this goal. While most of us suffered and died from other people's disappointments and our own.
However, here's the thing. There is what other people want you to do (which might kill you in the end) and what you really want to do in your heart of hearts. And if you do what other people want you to do you are going to either be dead or wish you were very soon. ONLY by doing exactly what is in your heart do you have any chance at all of enjoying your life. ONLY by living and creating the life and dream that you always wanted do you have any chance of a life you can stand to live.
So, if there is a chance you can survive your teens and 20s it will be about doing what's in your heart. And remember if you can't live with what you do in life then you won't. (In otherwords if you can't live with what you or someone else chooses for you to do you will soon be either crazy or dead. So, follow your heart, follow your passion so you have a life you can stand to live.
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