Only when you stop worrying about who you're supposed to be will you learn to have faith in who you are.

Having been raised an Orthodox Christian, I have had my faith tested frequently during my short time on Earth. As a lad, I was taught that the Church was the only path to righteousness, that getting dressed in my Sunday best and making a weekly pilgrimage to the altar to pray for my own salvation was key to being a good person.

Having been brought up in pristine Suburbia, I was taught, both by my elder family members and the scholastic system in which I was being groomed, the virtues of having a job paying well enough to afford a mortgage on some property, on which I could have a large house and multiple automobiles in the driveway, and that all I needed to achieve nirvana was to attain superior grades, get myself a degree and adopt a clean-cut, business-friendly image. I was taught by many of my peers that, if I lacked charm, decorum and a zest for the fruits of popular culture, no one who mattered would accept me, nor would any woman sleep with me.

Since time immemorial, society's educators have shaped young minds to conform to what it feels to be the ideal. These young minds are trained to view parents, teachers, employers and clergy as the authority on what constitutes "right" and "wrong", on what it means to be an upstanding citizen in the community. As I near the end of my twenty-seventh year as a human being, I reflect on my upbringing, on the upbringing of my peers, and am left to ask the following:

How many have taught us to have faith in ourselves?

Society thrusts its ideals upon us because it feels we are too dumb to know any better. We're taught to discard our hopes and dreams and fall in line, else face the consequence of being left behind in the rat race. My parents and educators sang my praises after seeing a string of "A" and "A+" values on my report card and felt I had a promising future of amassing capital for myself. What those closest to me slowly realized was the fact that I had no faith in myself to do anything of value with my life. What many of them fail to see, to this very day, is the fact that rarely did I receive any words of encouragement to dissuade me from believing I was capable of nothing beyond the status quo. People around me were determined to fit me into a mold while I was trying desperately to break free from it, and I do not doubt for a millisecond that many others can attest to my sentiments.

I say forget what society thinks we should be! If we are destined for a role on this planet, let us be masters of said destiny! Neither the Church, the State, nor the Family provides us with the knowledge to assess "right" from "wrong"; life does. We know we value life enough to not want another to take it from us, so we do not harm nor kill. We know we value life enough to want a helping hand when we are down, so we assist those who need it. We know who we are; more importantly, we know who we are not, and, for the vast majority of us, we are not what society believes we should be, seeing as how society grooms us to kill and maim in the name of its ideals. We are caring, compassionate people who wish to love and be loved, but end up becoming products of our cruel, repressive environment.

Let us live!