A lot of things are happening around me lately and I feel like sharing them here with the hope of getting Hive member's feedback on this particular topic, it might be a medium for people to learn as well.
I have a friend who suddenly started a weird kind of lifestyle, she used to be bold and confident. She is a few years older than me and I respect her a lot because she doesn't demand any form of respect from me which I still give her indirectly.
I noticed she is trying to force her into some clique of friends and she is automatically losing herself in the process. A lot of things have changed about her and I have a strong feeling that she would hurt herself in the process of seeking acceptance when she can do better with this clique.
My Image
Thinking about this brought a lot of things to my head and I will share them in this post. There is a saying that life is too short and it's best to live responsibly, I don't know if the older generation lived responsibly but this GenZ generation is far from living responsibly. I can't imagine living the life of someone else or forcing a clique of friends to validate my purpose of existing when I don't even know how long I will be here.
A lot of my peers today do not even own their lives anymore, they live for others which will most time always end in regrets and when they try to pick up their pieces after everything, they still do not get it right because they have wasted so much time on walking others path.
Seeking acceptance or validating your existence based on some people's way of life is a terrible way to live. It's not my first time seeing people abandon their lives for others and I learned not to try such at a younger age. I was raised to be able to be responsible for myself so I am contented and don't envy anyone's lifestyle no matter how well they are doing in life.
After completing Junior school, it was time for me (I and my classmates) to decide whether we would join science or commercial class. There were some clique of friends who joined the science department and it was shocking to even teachers because there was a particular girl among them who always said she would be the queen of the art class but everything changed while seeking acceptance, she threw her dreams away all because she didn't want to fall out of the clique.
Unfortunately, she and a few members of the clique couldn't cope with science department. Some of them saw the need to quit but this girl in particular didn't, she was there until the end of Senior secondary school and it was then she realized that all the three years spent in Senior secondary school was a waste of time.
She failed her WAEC and had to repeat the exam but she didn't still succeed. While she was struggling, the majority of her friends moved on and they didn't even remember her anymore. She was left with herself and had to start from scratch again.
She spent four years before she could get back in line with her life again. She was lucky because there were people who never got it right again.
We need others to live truly but we don't need to throw our lives away because of them. I really don't know how to talk my friend out because she seems lost and I am scared because it would break her down when she realizes that she was wasting her time all this while.
I have many times lived for others but not in anyway hurting myself. Helping my friends, supporting them the best way I can live for people and not the other way around.