Other people's agendas - Who am I?

Aria Stark (Maisie Williams) talking to her father, Eddard Stark (Sean Bean)

The daughter of the King to the King:

- “Can I be lord of a whole fast?”

- “You will marry a high lord and rule his castle.

And your sons should be knives,

and princes, and lords...”

- “No. That’s not me.”

Game of Thrones, Season 1, Episode 4, 26’30’’

TV Shows, just like other cultural productions, are often an invitation to reflect upon general and deep questions that animate our societies and find resonance in our very lives. Some of these questions are recent[1], others humans have been struggling with for centuries.

Other people's agendas

Sometimes, people have plans for others: their children, their friends, their relatives... They know what they want them to become, what's best for them. These plans have been in their minds even before the conception of the child, in the case of children.

Some want their children to become what they couldn’t be themselves, they want them to be the doctor, the professional they couldn't be themselves. To please their parents, if we take the example of the children, they will embark on a journey, on a path that is simply not theirs, that they haven’t chosen, and, more sadly, that just doesn’t fit them, isn’t what they were meant to be.

Other times they want to become what birth, the ruling order tells them to be, as in the example taken from Game of Thrones.

But wait a second...

The consequences of such 'indoctrination', or to be more accurate: the active act of letting others decide for us can be dramatic. The child, who has become an adult, may at some point turn around and wonder what he/she is doing, why he/she is doing it. 
The question then becomes...

What is it I was meant to be?

One thing is certain: “I am already complete”. I encountered this simple yet disturbingly deep affirmation the first time while listening to an audiobook by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is well-known for introducing meditation practice into Northern American hospitals. I didn't need this degree, this career. I was already complete. I have been complete for a very long time. Nothing was in deed missing in me. The answer lied in me the whole time. I had been yet paying too much attention to the tumult, the noise around me and didn't listen carefully enough to the little voice inside me. What I was meant to be is already inside me, it is up to me to find out. 
Anthropology compares groups with one another to learn more about each of them. History follows the same group throughout history, comparing it to what it was, did and believed in at an earlier point in time. These are also two ways one can follow to find out who one really is. I can look at my history to learn about myself: my childhood, situations I found myself in and did or did not feel comfortable in... Things that are meaningful to me, less meaningful to me. In comparison to others - not the comparison that makes me feel bad about myself when I try to figure out who is doing better - I can become interested in what it is they are doing, which I may find interesting as well.

How can I find out?

This is simple - yet not easy - and requires only three things.
1. As in many instances, the first stage has to do with gaining awareness. 
It is important to first uncover what in our plans, our lives is actually not ours, but belongs to other people and we took on for a lack of assertiveness or because we didn't try hard enough. I never wanted to study math... My math teacher once suggested it to me and because I was good at math and valued his opinion, I started a Bachelor but I am just not liking it.

2. Once the part of the others has been identified, time has come to get rid of their ideas, their legacy in us that is just not suitable to us.. 
Well, somehow I started studying math and all along I heard the voice of my parents telling me: "You don't stop something once you have started." I understand the value of their point, but I simply am not enjoying what I am doing, I have given it an honest chance, "that's not me", I am not meant to do this.

3. The last one is to entertain an attitude of curiousity toward the world, its possibilities.
Now, what is it I like? I recently meant this girl, not much older than me. She said she was doing carving. I remember enjoying watching my father doing woodwork when I was young. I am going to ask my acquaintance if I can go to the shop she works at and see what it's like to carve stone. I went, I enjoyed it, they were looking for some extra help, which I gladly offered them. Later on I took a course in the field and now I have my own carving company.

I had let myself be imprisoned in a life plan that wasn't mine but corresponded to the agenda or the life aspirations of others. I was able to free myself, become myself. After some stumbling, I found out what it was I interested in, what fitted me best and worked towards doing it. I was already complete, I just hadn't paid enough attention...

[1] Some ‘recent’ questions are in fact not that recent. See for instance the phenomenon of globalization, which has a long history and only very recently became a phenomenon we are fully aware of: Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, 2009, by the historian Timothy Brook.