I’ve decided that I’m not going to college next year. Instead I’m going to take a few years off, using that time to travel, try things that I’ve never tried, and generally just figure myself out, and then I’ll go to college in my 20s and try to really build a career from there.

This probably sounds hilarious. This probably sounds like something your stoner friend texts you on Saturday night. I’m not going to lie, just typing that out stressed me out a little because I started thinking of how I would have to take out massive student loans because my scholarships would be void, and how I would have to try and find a job that would make me enough money to live off of until I got a college degree.

But why?

Why is it totally wrong to consider taking a little time off? Why are people shot down when they consider going against societal norms?

Because your life isn’t really yours.

Your life belongs to your parents, to your friends, to the government, to the world. When humans developed higher level thinking skills, they also developed an inexorable reliance on the people around them. Yes, in order to develop a society that functions at the level of ours, we have to work together, but that also means that we have to sacrifice a certain amount of independence.

Instead of saying, “You can be whatever you want to be,” parents should be saying, “You can be whatever you want to be as long as you’re fulfilling your obligation to make enough money to support us, a quarter of which is gonna go into taxes and the mortgage and your electricity, water, and phone bills anyway. You can be whatever you want as long as you’re doing something that we can brag to our friends about, and it’s something that we can pay for you to go to school for, and you’re prepared to put all your energy into it with relatively little personal satisfaction.” Still want to be an astronaut, Billy? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

And yeah, high school is totally preparing you for the rest of your life… as long as you want to go into a traditional academic career. You want to be a chef? Haha, no you don’t, take this physics class. You want to be a stay-at-home mom? So… Calculus? (And if you just thought to yourself, well being a stay-at-home mom isn’t a real career and people who do that are just stupid so that doesn’t count, then you are missing the entire point of this article, friend.)

I don’t think it should be this way.

So what if I want to be a starving artist living hand to mouth in a tiny apartment? So what if I want to get ridiculously rich and not give any of it to charity? So what if I want to live among the wolves thousands of miles from society? So what?

As long as you’re not hurting anyone else, just do what you want. We’ve got one shot at life (unless the Buddhists had it right all along, which would be awesome) and, unless we’re happy, it’s pretty much a waste.

So stop worrying so much about your class rank or your PSAT score or even how clean your room is. Yes, there are lots of unavoidable responsibilities, and not all of them are going to be enjoyable. But let go of the stuff that really doesn’t matter, or the stuff that you can’t change. Take a day off. Pet a dog. It’s going to be okay.

Obviously I have trouble remembering this sometimes, but I’m working on it.