The Road Less-Traveled

(Making up for Lost Time)

Breaking away from the norm - this is important. Instead of focusing on the general tendency of conformity to be associated with societal flaws, I will focus on the pros of the road less traveled.

To start, it's clear that today's geniuses did not conform, they left the common trail followed by the rest of society. Many would agree that going to college and getting a degree is a safe way to find success, but what about those people who view "safe" as something a little too cliche'? Take Mark Zuckerberg, one of the many millionaires (maybe even billionaires) of the word who did not finish college. Today, he is labeled as one of the 'Einsteins' of our generation, not because he left college, but because he took his own resources and developed one of the largest internet networking databases on the planet (and he did it without a college education, which deviates from the norm).

Another example: which some may find a little too predictable, but I'll explore it anyway. The founders of our country definitely did not conform. They found a societal flaw and shattered it to form one of the strongest countries in the world. They used their education, experiences and observations as a tool to form their own trail, which in turn created an empire. The problem they were facing was conformity: King Geroge's unfailing belief that in order to keep himself in power, people needed to conform. It's clear that those who opposed this ideology were brilliant, and those same people did what they had to do to restore justice.

So what inspired my writing of this? An incredible book we're reading in class forced me to ponder this idea (formulated by George Orwell). 1984 is a perfect example of how conforming can be dangerous (but sometimes it is okay). Deviation is what creates new ideas, systems and worlds - so it is up to us to find where we need to deviate and discover, and execute our deviations with intelligence.