We teeter on the edge of break down. They'll say that we're just not trying and sometimes it's true only because we've learned that trying to get approval never gets us what we want. We're told to be confident and to disregard what others think by the same people who then train us to rely on their evaluation of us because “others” applies to everyone but them. We're told to follow our dreams then have other dreams fed to us under the conviction that they're more nutritious.
That's how they teach us our first emotion: Submission. The one where we have our own secret fantasies but they've fed us their dreams and their dreams are for us to be perfect “scholars”.
Scholars! After that we have to figure it out ourselves. They force feed us an education we don't want or need so that we can be a “very useful” part of a society run on principles invented before the first public schools but at least we're scholars! Because searching for what you actually want in life is less important than getting a grade on a test.
They write out 10 year plans for us when we hardly remember what we were doing 10 minutes ago and say that we mustn't make mistakes we mustn't fall no error room is built in we were taught that if we feel off the tightrope with that single misstep we were no longer needed ,no longer wanted, no longer worthy. Unless you are capable of being a doctor or a lawyer you're dead in their eyes.
So why do we thrive? Within the reject pile, the garbage heap of our population, fester the artists. The ones who refuse to stay still, the ones who speak with rhythm or without or with brushes of a paintbrush, the ones who scream in their pencils scratching, we lie here. There are pieces of us scattered about, dropped in odd offices or caged in a museum for everyone who knows about everything to come in and boast about how brainy they are.
The nerds were never the cool guys but the artists were never anyone. We were papers hung and forgotten by the teachers desk, doodles overtaking notes, every dream that was called unrealistic. Because you can't be a flower when they're looking for cement. But we had to fight our way through your brittle layers, fight for every crack in your surface, because we had to be the improbable, we had to fight to be ourselves in a world that told us No, because we had to believe we were worth it. We had to trust that they were wrong.