Why Is The Future So Scary?

I have recently become aware of how terrified I am of the future, but as this is a recent development I am still trying to figure out why exactly. From a young age we are told how important specific things are to our future; things like education, skills and friendship. Stick in at school - you will need it for the future! Learn to cook and clean - you will need it for the future! Make some friends - you will need them for the future! When we are young we aren't too sure what the future is and when we are going to reach it, especially when our parents are still talking about their future. All we know is that we need a lot of things to handle this future. I suppose that is why the future seems scary, because we can't face it just as we are, we need a collection of 'weapons' made up of skills, education and other people. Every time we fail an exam we think 'oh no, how am I going to face the future now?' When we burn the dinner for the nth time we accept that our cooking skills will not be helping us in the future. When that friendship crumbles or that relationship breaks apart - we fear for our future. Sometimes we just need a parent to sit us down and tells us that it is no problem that we didn't pass Maths or manage to cook a meal without burning something. We should be told that we are fine exactly as we are and that we can handle the future without a plethora of skills or social groups. It would be a nice and comforting reassurance that we all need from time to time.

In Defence Of Our Dream

 mood: stuffed
listening to: kings and queens - 30 seconds to mars

So it was my godson's second birthday today and I went down to celebrate it with his family and gave him his gifts and everything else you do for a second birthday. After the presents were opened and the candles on the cake had been blown out for the second time (he cried 'again!' and started singing Happy Birthday to himself so we had to) we somehow got onto the discussion of jobs and careers. My views on things like University and jobs never seem to go down well with my family, as I am of the opinion that money does not matter as much as doing something you enjoy. I discussed how I will make my future decisions based around the question: Will this make me happy? My aunt simply laughed at my apart naivety and told me that the world wasn't like that. She said that I will most certainly end up doing a job I dislike simply because I 'get stuck'. She asked what would I do if I started a job,  but later discovered I hated it. The answered 'change' was apparently laughable.


We only have one life, and we spend so much of it working - why waste that time working at something you do not enjoy? I believe we should have the main aim of being happy in life, and base our lifestyles around that. Am I the only one who has this opinion of how we should live our lives or are there others out there who don't believe we should settle for unhappiness just because we get more money?