Hello, as you may notice I have recently signed up. I write often, so I googled "literature forums" to find some place to gain input into my writing and to read other's as well! So here I am, and this place seems great.
This is version one. I'm still working on it to get my ideas straight.
Monologue of a Teenager Trying to Find Fulfillment in Life
Every day I ask myself: Why am I here? Why do I do the things I do? What is causing me to lead the life I lead? Ever since I was five I have been attending school. I have been learning the things some fat group of mostly, if not all, white men think I need to know to live in this world. Why can't I decide what I want to learn? Why don't I have control of what I do to live in this world? I don't even know what I want to know, because going to school has rotted my brain away. Every year it is the same, from age five to eighteen: english, math, social studies, science, and electives. Every single year, from five to eighteen. Most of my "education" I don't even remember, which renders every forgotten hour in school a waste of time. I hate wasting my life; I only have one.
School limits the mind to doing just the minimum just to get through the day. So why am I here? I look at my transcript and I am a number out of another number. All I am is one among many. All school does is compare me to others; self-improvement has no meaning. I learn what I am told to learn, take a test, and hope I do better than others. There is no self-improvement. My life is based solely on the lives of others, and theirs on mine. So why am I here? I sit here and ask myself this every day and yet I don't leave. I know: I need to get a high school diploma so I can go to college so I can get a good job so I can make a lot of money so I don't have to live the struggled life my mom lived. That's why.
But why does one thing determine whether or not life is a struggle? One thing, in our world, determines my quality of life, and that is money. I drive down the streets of Phoenix, Arizona and it is business after business in a grid that extends for miles. Every single block, the same dull paint with the same ugly billboards objectifying women and glorifying cheap calories and beer. That is our life.
So why am I here? The way I see it, life is pointless unless you die fulfilled. Is earning money fulfilling? The thought of that sickens me. Money is nothing except a separation of class. If one had all of the money in a system, then money would be useless. If everyone had an equal amount of money, it, again, would be useless. If no one had any money, of course, it would be useless. $180,000 a year is only an accomplishment if the majority of people around you make less than you. I will not life my live comparing myself to others. Defining success in terms of money is only done through comparing how much I have to how much everyone else has. Why judge the quality of my life by comparing it to people who are worse off than I? Because that is all money is: a separation of class. A separation of those who live well and those who struggle. Sure money buys food, money buys water. But it took me eighteen years to realize that food grows naturally. Water flows naturally. Food and water are not products of a corporation but they are gifts from the earth, and it is wrong to deny someone these gifts because they cannot afford it. It is wrong to charge for them.
Why work? Why sell hours of my life so a fat white man can profit from it? My life is not capital. My life is sacred. I should not have to sell my life (especially at a profit to someone else) to live. I will not be a slave. I cannot work and be fulfilled. Sure, I could buy things, but what satisfaction does that bring? I do not feel fulfilled when I buy anything. Every dollar I spend in an American corporation they take it and starve a child thousands of miles away; that is not a lifestyle I can subscribe to. I will not sell my life, my mind, my body, my soul so others will suffer.
I am tired of it. I am tired of living my life by the terms of others. Success in school is determined only by comparing me to others. Success in the "real world" is only determined by comparing me to others. I am tired of it. I cannot be fulfilled by comparing myself to others. I am my own president, my own congressman, my own senator, my own mayor, my own schoolboard, my own principal, my own teacher. No one can tell me how to live my life except for me, and I will not be told otherwise.
I will only find fulfillment by pursuing my dreams, and that is what I will do.