The Script(ure)

A few weeks ago, as I conversed with a couple of colleagues over a savoury meal, one question stayed up in the air. What's the plan, now that we have reached the considerable stages of our education system and are merely employed? Should we keep accumulating documents so that we are more competent in the work arena? Should it be okay that the ladder upstairs only aligns us into marriage, childbearing and then committing our entire future devoted to balance the family and work spaces?

As children, we were coerced into getting role models, mentors and sometimes counsellors to help us stay on the staircase. These played an important role but now that we are of age and are expected to be in charge of our own lives, what next? Have we grown up or we are simply growing old?

"Discipline, foresight and bourgeois willingness to delay gratification, are traits developed over time, through adults prodding and example..."writes Kay Hymowitz in her book Marriage and Caste in America. She argues persuasively that the life script of education, work and childbearing has been a powerful guide towards a rewarding life. Everyone is looking forward to a reward such as success, wealth and happiness.

The writer and activist, Maya Angelou, put it this way. "I am convinced that most people do not grow up, we marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old." It is suffice to note that I have completely nothing against marriage.

In reality we are a totalsome of what we eat, see, hear, touch and smell without forgetting the other senses of balance, pressure, temperature, pain and motion. These senses are nurtured in whichever environments we grow, by our parents or guardians, teachers and friends with no exception made to the movies we watch, music we listen to and the books we read. Henceforth, they culminate into our direct and indirect manuals and thus our subconscious life scripts.

My mid-twentienties have paused quite a big challenge beyond what I was warned about. At the end of my fourth year at law school, I undertook so many sleepless nights baffled by this puzzle. So many people my age seemed to have it all figured out; finish law school, go to Law Development Centre, do your masters, get employed in a prominent law firm, get married and blah blah blahhh. I was only certain that that's not what my happy future needed but had no idea how I was going to disentangle myself out of this script. Easier said than done, they say.

Wondering about, I learned to lean in more into nature, constantly listen to my heart and all that kept resounding was what the scripture says. I decided to surround myself with people that bring out not just the good in me but also the God in me. To choose the will of God as a way of life is a hard paper to this my generation. There are trends, media and peers wrapped as the job market ready to claim our future regardless of our different cultural and religious affiliations.
They regulates our thoughts, and we have chosen them for our next "big thing" because we trust the script. Truth is that the script delivers but partially as many young people have been faithful to it but they have been disappointed; quite an angst experience.

Proverbs 3:5-6, "trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths". Another very interesting chapter is Psalms: 119:105, " Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."  The harvest is truly plenteous, but the Labourers are few, saith the Lord. There are many opportunities around us but maybe we are surrounded by so much darkness, we can't see them; we have internalized and crammed the ordinary life script but know so little about the scripture. Where could we ever go wrong with scripture directing our future?