You are the Captain of your own ship

I think that modern society is so limiting.  Something my high school theatre teacher said to me sticks in my mind and I think it's very telling.  He said "We wake up every morning in our boxes, we then get in another box to go to work to spend all day in another box to go back home to our box."  We live in a society of boxes.  We are dictated to about how to act, dress, live.  It's sad and shameful.  And the public education system is absolutely no better.  So to hear a professor tell an entire class, granted it is a creative class, that we are the captains of our own ships was absolutely refreshing.  To just imagine that we essentially have the unbridled, unstructured, uninhibited freedom to just use our minds and passions was just that: freeing.  I wish more classes were (un)structured like that.  I wish more aspects of our lives could have that freedom of possibility.  Like, what if at our jobs our bosses told us that they didn't care how we did our job, as long as it got done, and we could feel free to do it that was best for us.  Imagine that.

On another, and unfortunately more depressing note.  I personally own stock in my company through a company stock sharing program thing.  I couldn't explain it if I tried.  I'm 21 years old and only have this investment because I thought it would be an excellent way to get started paying off my student loans.  Anyway, in my youthful naivete I allowed myself to believe that the current economic crisis wouldn't affect me.  And then I got my stocks statement in the mail today.  What a slap in the face that was.  I think that is when the economic trouble of a country is truly serious: when even the successful youth are being hit hard.  But we are a strong people and a strong country.  I know we'll bounce back, and I'll indeed be able to pay my student loans...  Eventually.