“Society is constructed by us, so who are we really rebelling against?”
By: Pooja Gandhi
Society is ultimately a manifestation of our own minds – it is a clear reflection of nothing but our own creation. Hence, societal change can be brought at any moment that we decide, and in order to effectively implement this change, we need to transform our own consciousness.
Societal expectations play a huge role in the way we plan our lives from a very young age. During our childhood, we are often told to obey authority without questions simply because they hold a higher social position than us. This causes us to lose our inner voice and results in (a) lack of critical thinking. If we try to voice our opinions, we are quieted because of our young age and with the excuse that we don’t know as much. Ultimately, instead of creating our path and learning from our own mistakes, we are required to follow a predetermined plan that was created by others. Most people as they get older maintain this mindset and find it harder to make their own decisions as all of theirs have always been made for them such as educational, career, or family-life decisions according to societal expectations.
Another social construct that affects the way children grow up to be is the misconception that money is the key to be successful. Children are not to blame for having this belief though. From a young age, our school systems and other social influences have made us believe that money is the ultimate goal in life – as if without it, life is meaningless and if we fail to earn a certain amount of money, then we are essentially failures. Due to this, we see everyone overworking themselves in school to eventually get a ‘respectable’ and high earning job. Yet, they still feel sad and empty inside, not realizing that true happiness doesn’t come from a million dollar bank balance, rather it comes from learning to be happy within ourselves with or without money.
Along the lines of this, many of us feel the need to own a lot of materialistic items to be happy. The abundance of advertising we see nowadays leads us to believe that happiness is found in objects and if we don’t have it all, then we can’t enjoy ourselves. People buy more and more, without realizing that we will always feel thirsty for more, because acquiring materialistic objects will never fulfill our emotional needs. To be truly happy within ourselves, we need to form meaningful bonds and create memories with others, pursue our passions and remain grateful for the little things that we’ve been blessed with.
Despite knowing and reading through this, many of us will still choose to blindly abide by societal rules and compromise our happiness to feel accepted by society. However, all that this is doing is making us sacrifice our well-being. Forcing ourselves into a life that may not be the one we want, or sticking to doing things a certain way due to the fear of society is evidently not a good decision to make. Rebelling against society is not easy, but it is important to do in order to bring out inner peace, happiness and freedom. And, society is constructed by us, so who are we really rebelling against?
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