It is Sunday morning. I’m sitting hear listening to classical radio on Pandora. My weekend was mild, and I awoke around 8:30 am today. I like to get up early most mornings, which seems uncharacteristic of someone my age (25). I enjoy the early morning. There’s a quiet serenity not found in other parts of the day. There is time to relax. Time to think and reflect. Today, I found myself reflecting on early mornings from my childhood at grandma and grandpa’s. I was raised an only child, and often spent weekends at one set of grandparents or another. When you’re a child, it’s beyond you that everything you are experiencing will someday shape the person you turn out to be. In a way, every experience we have as a child influences the adult we become. No one is immune to influence. In fact, quite the opposite. We soak it up, absorb it. As a teenager full of angst, I remember looking to everyone else for guidance. How should I dress? What should I say? How should I act? What is cool? I was still developing my own thought process, opinions, and lifestyle. I felt lost, or without an identity for many years. I wanted to be influenced. If I could absorb enough influence from others, perhaps “they” would want to be friends . It seems nothing less than pure irony, that in the end, it was my own individualism that helped me flourish in life.

I am always fascinated to learn, and reaffirm, that age has almost nothing to do with mental/emotional maturity. We are all at different stages of our own journey. Who are we to judge? There are enlightened 20 year olds, and conceited 50 somethings, although I’m not sure which is more prevalent. I’ve have always wondered how people make their way through life with the thought process they have. Not judgmentally, but rather, curiously. Why can some stand on the pillars of their own beliefs, and thoughts while others simply seem to look to be influenced by everyone else? This is a concept I would like to say I have struggled with, but in reality, am more familiar than I’d like to admit. Acceptance. That son of a bitch, acceptance. We all strive for it, whether we admit it or not. Everything we do is to find acceptance in a society that was established long before we ever arrived. It’s hard wired into us. Whether it’s the starving artist waiting for their big break, or the Wall Street hedge fund account manager. We all just want to make it, albeit for our own intensely personal reasons. So what is the difference maker? Influence.

While many are content to oblige the ebb and flow of pop culture, others choose or fall into, their own, often considered “strange”, abnormal path. This means nothing except that some paths/ideologies/lifestyles are simply less validated. There are less people choosing to be an influence, rather than be influenced. People will always be more willing to accept what has already been proven, or picked up on. My entire generation was told, or rather sold, “Get a loan, go to college, get a job.” How has that worked out? The tragedy is we were all just doing what was accepted, validated, and proven at the time. We were all influenced to approach life with that method. Unfortunately, it didn’t all work out as planned for most of us. The economy crashed, our parents pensions crashed, our student loan rate is about to double. Things could be better here in our generation, and if the whole meltdown over the last 5 years has taught me one thing it is that you have to be

an influence, rather than be influenced. Advice is great, but ultimately, the person you take it from has no stake in what happens in your life. There is never a shortage of advice. And you can always find advice in any direction. Advice to go left, advice to right. There is always someone who will agree with you, and that in it self, is the issue.

Life isn’t about making the “right” decision. It’s not about taking advice from people who will never have to live with consequences of your decisions. Life is about being who you are. I’m not religious in any way, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some of the lessons presented in scripture. At the same time, I don’t need a book to tell me how to live my life. I am my own moral compass. Some days that compass is clear, and easily read. What you should do is spelled right out. Unfortunately, some days it is not so clear. The right choice for you isn’t always so easy to decide. The only person living with these choices is yourself. Own it. Be proud of it. These choices define you, not only in the future, but right now. We are simultaneously living and growing. It’s an obnoxious paradox, but we are stuck with it. Like playing a video game with no restart button. By the end of it, you know what you would have, maybe should have done, but it’s already happened and you are stuck with the choices you made. There’s no sense living life in shame because things didn’t work out like you planned. Much better to take the lessons you’ve learned and use them to be the person you are. Like I said, be an influence.