Introduction
I believe we had a similar question not too long ago, I'm not 100% sure but I believe it was some months ago. Either way, things change over time and I decided to enter this week's question again. I have to admit, that I had to think quite hard about the answer because there is not a clear and single answer I can give here. Where as a child, I may have had some idols to look up to and probably believed a lot that I read in magazines and watched on tv. Not all, but yeah, I have to admit that I was probably quite naive believing those people that I liked for some reason. Things have changed.
I learned more from the school of life than actual school..
In my teens, I started to see that the mandatory school I attended, was just a serious burden to me and wouldn't get me anywhere in life as I would most-likely not spend any time in the future using the things I learned in at least half of the classes I had to follow. Granted, a few of them have been valuable in my life, but most of them haven't. Although at that age, I had no idea about how my vision about life and overall knowledge we learn at school would make a 180 degrees turn in the future, I could already foresee the fact that most time in school was actually pretty useless. The thing was, I didn't have the guidance to figure out what my passion really was or what kind of jobs I would like to do, let alone finding the right study direction. This is something that I feel quite sad about when I think back about this part of my life, some more guidance would have probably made a tremendous difference in those next years after I had to pick a direction, and after I dropped out 1,5 years later from that one.
By the time I made this choice, I was already totally disconnected from my school and the people on it. There was not one single teacher that could grab my attention anymore. It felt as a waste of time and I decided to start working full-time instead. I was kind of rebellious at the time, I have to admit, and I just dropped out when my mother was gone for a 2 week job, she found out when she returned. That's how connected my mother and I were. She wasn't happy, of course, but a little more interest from her side would have definitely made a difference. Either way, I was glad this burden fell off my shoulders and for me personally, it would have been a waste of time to have that diploma in the end.
I do remember having a few teachers in lower education that made an impact
I remember some math, biology and social science teachers that actually connected with their students and where I (even though I didn't really like the material) made an effort because they had a different way of teaching. So I probably looked up to them at the time, as I can still remember a lot of things from those classes.
I find it shameful to say, but it's the truth, that I never had my mother to look up to when growing up. She has never been my role model and I always feel a bit jealous when I speak to someone that actually adores their mother. I did have my grandparents to look up to to make up for this! But my grandmother died when I was a teenager and my grandfather drowned himself in sorrow after she died. He's still alive, but I never saw the spark in his eyes again that he used to have when my grandmother died.
I can not forget my aunt and her husband
When I was a child, I actually looked up to one aunt and uncle, my mother's sister and her husband. I was always so happy when I could spend a night or weekend over at their house because they spoiled me a lot. They had a nice house with nice furniture in it and always bought the more expensive and luxury food we couldn't afford at home. They had a certain lifestyle which they could easily afford having no children and 2 great jobs. I was always happy to come there as I felt that they were the perfect couple and an example for the future, to make something of my life.
When I grew older, and my mother started to get ill (manic depression) the true colors of the family (mostly aunt and uncle) came to the surface, and I discovered that they weren't there for me at all. I was just 15 years old, and they didn't even bother to help me find my lost mother, while they had a car and I only had my bike. I felt deeply disappointed in the lack of help from them and slowly in the years that followed, I started to hear more about how "good" their marriage had been all these years. Quite shocking, but it wasn't at all. I had been fooled all these years, thinking that they were a great example. When the moment arrived that my aunt made a few accusations that were out of line and unforgivable, I knew that I didn't want anything to do with her ever again. So my bubble totally burst, I looked up to them all my life, but learned that people can hide their real nature quite well.
Boyfriends or friends to look up to?
I don't think there has ever been a boyfriend or friend that I saw as my example or someone that walked in the shoes that I would have loved to have one day. I felt proud of some friends for what they achieved, yes, and I did go to a few of them for help and guidance in certain situations, but they have never been role models for me. I always felt there was a lack of something, if that makes sense. I loved them for being a good friend, but I would not want to trade with any of them.
Although I had a few boyfriends with some skills and knowledge, they used them for the bad, and therefore I'd never look up to any of them. I always felt that they wasted their talents on the bad side of life while I saw a thousand possibilities to use them for the good. I still have the one and only exception when it comes to boyfriends, my current boyfriend, who is very wise and he is probably one of the few in real life that can teach me something valuable at the moment. I always love hearing his stories about the things his dad has taught him when he was still alive. He probably never really realized when growing up, how wise his dad was and how much valuable lessons he had taught him over the years. I only met him once, and we weren't a couple at the time, so I never really interacted with him, I only learned from my boyfriend's stories that this was an unique man and had learned a lot from the school of life as well.
Online friendships, famous people?
I remember mentioning this in another post with the similar question, and this hasn't changed. Some people I met online have made a bigger impact in my life than most of my friends I have met in real life. There are a few friends in real life that I could relate to due to similar paths we walked, but none of them came close to those people that I met online (mostly on Hive) where even the strangest stories I shared, weren't doubted as they had experienced similar things. I think it has to do with the fact that a lot more "awake" people that don't just assume that things that we are told and taught are the truth find their way to crypto, and therefore a lot of these people end up on platforms like Hive.
It's been proven many times that the not so awake people in my life, don't even consider checking out hive or any cryptocurrency stuff as they believe what's been told on mainstream media, that cryptocurrency is used for transactions in the underworld f.e. to buy drugs. None of them really wants to make an effort to do their own research and decide on their own. Which is a shame, but I honestly stopped trying because it's not worth my energy.
Last, we have famous people.. I can't pin point just a few people that I have listened to online or seen in tv shows/movies/documentaries that have made an impact. Of course, there have been a lot that made me see things different, but I can't say that any of them have made such a huge impact that I totally changed my way of thinking. I mostly changed my beliefs based on what I experienced in my life, and when talking to others that have walked the same path. You know what they say, once you go down the rabbit hole, there's no stopping to it. I have spend a few years finding answers (or trying to) but now I focus on the positive as much as possible, as there is no benefit for me to find even more dirt about how the world truly functions. The pandemic has made me dig up some more dirt, and during the first wave, I realized that it wasn't helping me to have a positive state of mind at all knowing all these things.
I prefer to slide things off, and not investigate everything I find since then. This has helped me sleep a lot better than when I wanted to have the answers to the why and how and who.
Music is the exception!
When talking about famous people being a role model or not, the artists that can perform a song with so much feeling that I'm touched in a way, are those that I admire and will listen to the music over and over again. To me, there's always been something magical about music and people that can bring the music to you with such emotion that you get lost in it and feel the message in your body. I can get lost in so many sorts of music, as it's the artist that performs it that counts and will touch me (or not). I don't stick to one genre, what I listen depends on my mood. Sometimes I just need to have a few hours of grief and cry, and listen to a playlist that reminds me of the phase in my life that I grief about.
For now it's mostly the summer vibe songs that I search and listen to, even though we have no festivals in the near future, I don't want to forget that awesome festival vibe feeling that makes me long for summer.
And with that, I end this very long post, which probably got a bit off-topic at some points (sorry for that!), but for some reason, this was what I had to write today.
Thank you for stopping by! Have a lovely weekend <3