Over Easter, I was at church with some of my extended family. I was surprised to see that one of my younger cousins took to singing the songs and hymns very enthusiastically. He’s nine years old, and it was all I could do to keep myself from laughing out loud when I heard his less-than-perfect singing voice belting out the words at what must have been the top of his lungs.

After the initial humour of the event passed, I began to wonder. Why doesn’t he feel embarrassed? He was gathering both stares and smiles from everyone in the audible vicinity, yet he remained completely unphased; happily singing like he was the only one in the church. I then became very jealous. How awesome would it be, I thought, to be able to act in such a way that make one’s self perfectly happy and content, without having to worry about what other people thought of you? The thought left me speechless. The reality that our actions are shaped, pressured, even chosen by the ones around us really blew me away. We say that we don’t give into peer pressure when topics such as drug, sex, and alcohol come up, but I had never realized how much pressure we receive from our peers without even noticing it.

It really makes me envious of young children. They can act in whatever way they want (to an extent), without anyone seeing anything wrong. It really makes you wonder what point in time society deems a person to be ‘too old’ or ‘too mature’ to do something. Could you put a number on such a thing? If the general public chose an age, and said that once you reach it, you must act like an adult, would people obey? Is society so brainwashed, so zombified that we sacrifice our own pleasure and happiness to fit into some sort of twisted ‘clique’? I wish I could say it wasn’t true, and have my conscience remain innocent, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Look around. Stand on a sidewalk, downtown in a major city. People bustle by, talking on phones, engaged in conversation, often too busy to utter a simple ‘excuse me’ or ’sorry’. How different do you think their lives are from one day to the next? Do you think that they make unique choices and decisions on an everyday basis, or are they just following the flow that’s followed, in turn, by the rest of their colleagues and acquaintances? Can we all still be called unique? Do we all still possess qualities and traits that can identify us from one another, or are we so buried beneath our careers and jobs that we have trouble seeing life outside the office?

Just some thoughts that were running through my mind.