Staring blankly into the abyss of reality – dark, deep but convincing. A reality that revolves on every path I choose, on every decision I make and every breath I take. A reality that cripples passions and interests through acts of disapprovals and discouragements while pushing me to do better than good in things I don’t really want to do by comparing me to people I’ll never be.
For me, pressure means two things; one, the pressure used in Physics while the second one is the pressure that narrows the supposed broad spectrum of my life. According to Merriam – Webster Dictionary, pressure is “the weight or force that is produced when something presses or pushes against something else,” which is undoubtedly Physics, and the second one is “the weight of social or economic imposition,” a definition that absolutely delineate the sensation I felt for years, the sensation of the need to satisfy the expectations of the people around me.
Through the long years I’ve been engaged in an endless war against myself, a battle between the guilt of not meeting everyone’s expectations while sacrificing the time and effort intended for the things I enjoy and really wanted to do versus the urge to follow my heart to the cost of failing people’s outlooks.
During my difficult campaign to crusade through high school, I’m very active in extracurricular activities; journalism, quiz bees, student organizations and scouting as well as being a consistent academic honor student.
Extracurricular activities are my thing, wanting to join various activities of all kinds to just formally and legally cut classes. During the span of my whole junior high school journey, I’ve been travelling to various places inside and outside Palawan or attending different activities to an almost weekly frequency, to an extent of classmates being surprised in seeing me around in class.
Being a regular face in competitions and other activities, I’ve been winning province-wide contests in journalism and quiz-bees which also gave me chances to represent not just our school but the whole province of Palawan in the face of the whole MIMAROPA as well as reaching the highest attainable rank for senior scouts in the Scouting Movement, the Eagle Scout rank; feats only achieved by few, feats that didn’t even mattered from the eyes of people around me.
After long tiring trips from activities or competitions, I’ll be going back to the sad reality that all of my achievements in different fields are nothing if I cannot meet their expectations; standards of what I need to achieve – to be the top student academically.
I really never understood why they are pushing me to be what they wanted me to be, to the point of discouraging me to do things that I love to do as if I’m failing academically. I can proudly say that even though I’m always out of school, I’ve maintained my ranking in our room or even our batch as the person that stand next to the top spot and I am greatly satisfied about it.
If I chose to tread the path that they are pushing me to travel through, maybe I’m not here writing this article, maybe I’m not be able to hone my skills in journalism or maybe I will never be the person I am today. What I learned is you are the one who knows yourself which is definitely incomparable to how other people know you. Knowing yourself, don’t let other people dictate the life that you will pursue, because you and only you will know what path you will be truly happy.
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