And we stumble on...with Your help

For the first few years of our lives, we don't get to decide on most issues concerning ourselves.
We're dressed, bathed, told when to eat, what to eat, what not to eat, what to wear, where to go, how to walk and talk. We're shown the good spots to 'hang out', warned against friends who are 'bad influences' and pushed towards those who are 'good influences'.
Then slowly, we're given over to our own devices...for some, it takes longer than others, but it always happens eventually.
Finally, we can pick our friends, pick what to wear, where to go, when we can go. No longer do we have to give a detailed description of our day. We can just say," It was really great!" and then close up again.

The thing is, I doubt we really understand how to make these choices for ourselves. After having had them made for you for so long, I don't understand how they expect us to just take over and be right all the time.

It takes a lot of trial and error, stumbles and scrapes but eventually we get there. We're faced with a hurdle, manage to jump over it successfully and feel so proud of ourselves that we look around to see if everyone noticed. We look around, no one was watching; no one noticed. Disappointed, we go on with life, feeling like nothing big has happened, because that's exactly how the world regarded it.

We like to tell ourselves that we're different, but really, we're all the same. We all face the same issues, go about tackling them the same way. All of us human beings came from the soil, and we'll all go back to the same soil. The things that differentiate us also identify us and we definitely should embrace our unique qualities.

We all go through the same motions; we're born, raised, or in some cases, raise ourselves, gain our independence, fall in love, get hurt and/or hurt others, eventually settle down. Then comes engagement, then pregnancy (for us women) and your status changes. You're now a husband or a wife. That's not always the order, but it follows through, one way or another.

If all goes well, and you've found true love, you live a long life together, raise your family and probably die within a few years of each other.

And then what?