World-building
By: Savanna Macri
In movies, we see an imaginary high school experience, the one we hoped desperately to have. I imagined it as such.
We thought being young meant so many exciting things, like skipping school with friends and running through open fields and streets together, sitting under the sun and the stars, going to parties, coming home late, taking a car and driving nowhere in particular, going on group dates, skating, going on vacations together when no even out on break, playing sports in the park, meeting at diners late at night where somehow nearly everybody you know from school is there at the same time, pulling random jokes with strangers, making new friends no matter where we go, shooting off fireworks as though every day was the fourth of July, talking about everything and nothing. We expected adventures, stories we couldn’t wait to tell our kids about, knowing we would remember them until then.
That’s what we thought.
Then world hits, the world of possibility and challenge, and we crash. We didn’t expect to be in the same monotonous routine. Waking up in the early hours before going to school where the concept of learning is ruined by constant examinations and atmosphere of strict judgment, and creative and nutrition suspension. Our intelligence and capabilities are based on letters and numbers, fitting us into unfair categories. All just teaches us everything except what we will need for the rest of our life. We learn over textbooks for tests instead of experiences for life. It is a competition we never agreed to. We go to impress, not to succeed. Our mind calendar is wrapped around exam dates, stressing about the standardized tests soon to come so suddenly. We are told that tattoo we want is something we will regret when we are older, meanwhile our parents and teachers hand us college information packets to determine what we will do for the rest of our lives. One slip on an assignment and we are drowning; after all, mistakes are failures, and it defines our life. We have become so accustomed to the ideology of grades being more important and valuable than our moral standards and health. We learn over textbooks for tests instead of experiences for life.
We stand alongside the other students considering suicide and having mental breakdowns over all the work they must do and their expectations. We hear about kids taking their own lives or taking others, and remain in the same dangerous environment as them, left wondering when and what will change and what we can do. But as a teen, we are told our opinions do not matter. At the same time, we are demanded to be more adult.
Afterward, we deal with costumers who demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who perform it for them. We work as many shifts as possible to pay for our soon college tuition, but of course we will still require student loans. We will have to fight against the turbulent economy and bolded line between rich and poor. We come home in the middle of the night, piled with unfinished school assignments due the next day. We haven’t eaten since noon, and we have been up for nearly the entire day, only to rest for a few hours until we must start all over—we can’t remember the last time we felt fully awake. Sleep is not even for the means of rest anymore, but for the means of seeking relief from our life.
Our good is often what endangers us, as all we have to choose from. We fool ourselves, hiding and self-medicating with harm and drugs, acts of recklessness, pretending to be happy instead of cultivating long-term joy. When we speak of this ache, no one believes us. So, we forget and start the cycle over, the one consisting of danger and medication, masking ourselves because being strong often means being silent.
There are moments outside of this time; little distractions from it all, but it is only a glimpse of what could be. The good is often what endangers us, but that is all we have to choose from.
And through it all, we are labeled as ungrateful, lazy, indecent, entitled, undeserving, and narcissistic. That there is nothing wrong with the system. That we, ourselves, just aren’t doing enough.
We see the dream movies, and then we see ourselves. There is so much to compare, so little to relate.
I still see it, and it struck me more as I watched those who would take my place, those young and pure, that would ultimately be ruined by the corrupt workings of the world. I am far beyond saving now.
I would see the way parents would teach their children, and it always made my chest ache and stomach twist. I would see teachers and administrators part an arrangement of knowledge to the youth, but it never seemed to be enough that would actually matter, nothing that truly meant more than what met the eye. Children were always taught to see, but not to observe.
It drove me mad, the lessons we teach our children.
We engrain the typical gestures at such a young age, the course in which all American children are deemed to take; education, work, family. But what does that mean for them? What is the message of it? For education, we see college and preparation, exams and limitations. But do we see knowledge about self-awareness? Do we see understanding and empathy, exploration and connection? For work, we see owning a briefcase and sitting behind a desk with paperwork, earning a salary and saving up for a new house in a safe neighbor. But do we see experiment with all kinds of jobs, meeting interesting people and actually enjoying our work, not for the money, but for a time well spent? For family, we see marriage and having our kids, our parents become grandparents, with a red-brick house and a white picket fence with freshly mowed grass, gathered dinners and soccer games. But do we see the struggles destine to come? Do we see our entanglement of relationships, both through friends and lovers, and the complications of families, that may even leave us alone?
I suppose that is what scares me—the lessons we embedded in the children that make them think that is all there is. We blindfold them from birth and place them in front of a window, never letting them go outside and play on their own, and with it, we abandon them in the dark. We forget individuality and choice, and we stick the script of what typical life is, passed down from generation to generation, as though it is the recipe for fate. The only one we ever know.
We don’t let them see there is more. We don’t let them know there are other things beyond the conformity of what seems best.
I felt desperately for all the children, the way they wandered around the world like ghosts in shells, and it hurt every day. I would see running children, laughing and playing without a care in the world, and it broke my heart to know that they would eventually feel the weight of the world crush down upon their small shoulders. They would expose their dainty hands, pure and innocent, with nothing more to give. They would be rammed into split-second decisions and one-way roads with no room for mistakes, no room for exploration or connection, no room for freedom, and their hearts become worn before there is any room to grow. They no longer accept themselves as they are designed, but rather as the way others craft them. We press them with goals to have, ways to define themselves, giving options, but they are never the kind children are free to take for themselves without failing those watching them.
What is your dream? we ask, standing above.
Such a wicked game. Pressure applied, pressure enforced. We surround them in cookie cutters. Why is that the go-to small talk we have for children—what are your goals, and what do you want to be? Do we run out of compliments and just decide to take a turn into asking what sort of niche you plan to carve out for yourself in the howling existential morass or uncertainty known as the future? All the while children are still learning their own handwriting.
It took me years to find mine, and it drives me still;
You know when kids are asked who their role model is, who they want to be like when they grow up, and who their inspiration is? My dream is that one day, at least one kid will say me. They will say my name and mean it. Because if I can make an impact in just one person’s life… that’s enough for me. The most valiant thing you can do is inspire someone else. I believe that is a miracle alone, and perhaps it has already been granted.
But there are ways I still must make it. In order to make that dream happen, I must put reasons behind it, and I found no other way to do it than to put myself alongside all the struggling children, answering the questions with them to show there was always another way, always a world of possibilities that was ready for the taking.
There are other questions, more specific but equally terrible.
Where do you see yourself in five years? we ask, waiting for the rehearsed response.
Such a wicked game. Pressure applied, pressure enforced. Hopes change. Fears Change. They expect it all the same, the typical brands of goals, leaving children to fall away in the world of other expectations within a boarded-house, expecting answers of marriage, kids, jobs, a two-story house with a white picket fence.
But I would rather die than suffer like that, than to frame into that.
It took me years to define my truth;
Slight dehydrated, eating chocolate cake with warm frosting on it, I sit on a rooftop in a thinly cushioned chair overlooking rich streets and dazzling streetlights through plush tress. Around me are cinderblocks that may or may not contain secret compartments where I hide my candy and my liquor stashes, along with my potted plants of fat leaves in the shape of a duck’s foot. My chemical romance crackles in and out of a cheap radio I traded a pair of shoes for a local thrift store. I’m described as a sharp-tempered, grungy fool with a very reputable glare, a daydream dressed as a nightmare--a desirable aesthetic on my own terms--who plays cards, drinks cheap vodka, and drives like a madman. Daggers and daisies to the fullest. The government hates me but can’t touch me, my status is void, my writing never dies, and my friends never find my secret stashes. All is grand.
That is my brand of a goal.
It had always been a clear fact that I would never have children of my own, but there a message behind that I hoped everyone would see; I don’t want children, but I never stop caring about them. About the world I am making for them. Those alongside me are beyond saving by now--we all are--but we can still dip our hands in the pool of what can be for them. I think constantly about what would be left when I am gone, what I am willing to part, and it let me define something all the children can take to inspire themselves. Every time I looked at children, and then I looked at the world, a little piece of my heart broke over and over again. What would happen if we altered the directions of the world, therefore altering the way our children grew? Imagine how different the world would be if instead of striving for power, we strived for freedom. Imagine if instead of belonging to elite groups, we belonged to ourselves. Imagine if instead of fighting each other for a place at the table, we altered the table itself, and add more chairs. Imagine how different the world would be if we let ourselves be free, instead of demanding ourselves to be powerful?
After all, we are all building this world—let’s build it better. Let's build our own.
