Social butterfly

"She's the kind of girl you're nervous to introduce your parents to, you know? She's a little rough around the edges. But you know they'll love her eventually, once they see what she does to you...

...She's a bit of a bad girl. She breaks the rules...

...She dances even when there's no music. And she's got this thing about her that makes you want to be the same way. Sometimes she makes you happy. Sometimes she makes you sad. She challenges you. She'll even make you a little uncomfortable. But she makes you feel alive. She captivates you. She's like a drug. And she leaves you wanting more...

...She's not easy to be with, though. She's got a lot of baggage. She's been through a lot, and you can see it in her eyes. Trauma, neglect, loss of family members, economic hardship. But she's open about it. She loves sharing her story. About how she hit rock bottom and managed to get back up again..." - Joey Albanese


Whenever you pose a life altering question about love most people will tell you to "follow your heart."

As if it were that easy.

In a world so full of opinions, do we actually have the choice and freedom of following our hearts?

We all make choices and we like to tell ourselves these choices come from the heart, but they are usually based on feedback from our surroundings. We use social feedback to validate our lives; meaning we use it to decide if a choice we have made is good or bad. We tend to structure our lives to suit our social surroundings; no one likes to be judged and we all want social validation for our actions and choices. In fact, we structure our whole lives around this validation, even if it means losing something.

But how reliable are these social structures - can we trust them to make these type of decisions for us? Should we give up something we care about for the approval of our surroundings - in order to not break social norms?

Should we not get married young? Should we not date certain people because society says it's not 'right'? Do you stay with someone out of convenience? Do we let someone go because our friends don't approve?

I mean, these are all questions I've witnessed and in acquiring a professional degree that will handle these situations I think it's important to address my opinion:

The world will eventually get over its disapproval; but you may not - what's lost in your strife may never be recovered.

We give up one thing to gain another, but why can't we just have both?  Having both means having the courage to search for and discover the answers in our lives on our own - courage a lot of people don't possess. Find the courage because how unfortunate will it be down the road when realize you made the wrong choice and you lost the one thing you really wanted? Or maybe this has already happened to you - but it's never too late to have the courage to make things right - even if the road ahead seems ridiculous and difficult.

Honestly, one thing I've learned recently is in order to truly follow your heart you have to stop asking for advice and opinions, because the more opinions you get the less likely you are to actually get what you want in the end.

Don't second guess your feelings, you were right from the start (thanks Sarah Prettyman) - no one else has to live with the choices you make - only you do; so make sure the choices you make are for you and from your heart.