Weekend Engagement - Dare To Be Different

What missteps from your past have you learned from to create a more pleasurable, productive present life?

This weekend's prompts are challenging, and I have decided to go with the one that @tamaralovelace suggested!

For me, I think the biggest enlightenment I got this year was to really accept that it's okay to be different from the norms.

What do I mean?

Growing up, I am not sure if it was due to influence from parents, or from schools, or from society, or perhaps a combination of everything, that there is this "ideal" life to go through. When we were young, we were told to study hard, get good grades for our exams, then get into a good university, graduate with a degree, find a decent paying job, find a partner, get married, buy a house, have kids, work till 60 (or whichever the retirement age is), retire and enjoy the remaining years of our lives. Does this sound familiar? Actually I am not sure if this is more prevalent in Asia, or does it extend also to the Western world/culture as well. (Let me know in the comments below!)

I mean, let me state this upfront, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this "ideal" life. And I have no issues if people want to follow this sequence all the way from birth to death. What I think the main issue is, people/society start to form expectations, and expect everyone (e.g. their children, their friends, their colleagues, etc) to have this similar mindset. And when someone has a different mindset, for example, not wanting to have kids, people start to question why. It could be a case of someone falling out of the sequence, sometimes not by choice either, for example, failing to make it to university because of lack of finances, and people start to form impressions of them based on their qualifications.

For me, I conformed to that "ideal" life at the early stage. I was young and didn't know much, and I just took what the adults told me to do. I studied hard, I got decent grades, I went into university, I got my degree and I did manage to get a decent paying job. It was just "what everyone else did", I thought.

But as I grew a little older, and started to think for myself (as we all become independent at some stage in our lives), I realised I don't have the conventional view about some things in life. As of now, I am not married (no plans to), and of course I don't have kids, and I don't plan to work till 60. And it's not easy being the odd one out.

Another example I could think of is probably the topic of cryptos. Most people around me still view Bitcoin or cryptos as scams, and don't believe in them. The interesting thing is, they don't even want to try to read up or understand how these things work, and just simply brush it off based on either what they hear from their friends or just the volatility of the prices.

For me, my crypto journey has been so enriching and exciting at the same time. I made mistakes in the past cycle and learnt from them in this one. And it's not just about financial aspect or profits and losses. I got to experience so many interesting use cases of cryptos, be it gaming like Splinterlands, or even in the form of social media like Hive, and many more. If someone told me 3 years ago that I could accumulate a few thousands of USD in Hive just by writing, I wouldn't have believed them. Haha. And there's so much more. I got amazed with all the hype around memecoins too. Not that I am encouraging anyone to buy the coins, but I personally find it so interesting that the animals are so cute and it's just fun to watch the price movements sometimes.

But back to my point, most people aren't interested in these stuff. To them, these stuff are just, as some would call, "Magic Internet Money". It will burst someday and all go to zero. Shrugs.

Anyway, on the misstep, I think in the past I was too focused on conforming to this "ideal" life or maybe society's expectations. And because something significant happened this year (which I don't feel like sharing for sensitive reasons), it made me realise I should focus on my personal happiness and what I actually want in my life, instead of placing so much emphasis of what others think, or what's the "norms". And it's really okay to be different, or put it simply, to just be myself.

Weekends are always a good time for me to enjoy some good coffee and chill, and here's the one I had today. Talk about daring to be different, I actually tried something new on the menu, which is a butter latte. As the name suggests, it's butter with coffee, and to be honest, it's actually quite pleasant tasting. Haha. Would definitely order this again.

As always, thanks for reading this long post and enjoy the weekend!