the teenage norm of future-phobia

So as many of you may know, Life is shit.

We are told this by almost everyone, almost everywhere. One sentence that most teenagers, who have expressed their sadness or unhappiness in their current life, have heard is "life was so good when I was your age! Enjoy school because it all goes downhill from there!" And like I find it ridiculous. You are telling me that its supposed to be comforting?

So, because of all these sentences that I hear and because of how much stuff about inflation, jobs and just life in general, I feel like I have formed an intense fear of the future. 

Its scientifically proven that the thing that keeps us going is the dopamine boom right BEFORE a reward. Our brains do not actually like the reward itself, but the drive for it. This was tested on drug addicts, who had the highest spike of dopamine right before they got the drugs in their system. Its not the reward itself, its the drive for it.

So, knowing this, we can conclude that in reality, when taking away that want, that desire for future, you delete the part that wants to try to get that dopamine spike. In simpler way, when you tell someone that future is shit, they are not going to try in the present either. Therefore, teens who are fed with what their future is going to be, start:

despising their future, before it even started
filling their present with anxiety
getting extreme nostalgia and longing for past, when they did not know shit about world

And you may be asking: Lilichris, how did you pull this thing out of your...brain, what are you even yapping about?

And to put it simply, the greatest example of this intense future-phobia aka anticipatory anxiety is me and my own story.

I used to be a straight As student, but then, like out of nowhere, i slipped to 3s, 4s and even 5s. (Cs, Ds and Fs). And for a while, even right now, people keep asking me if it is because of matters like bullying, crushes, friends or similar. And i just wanna say, that adults who ask these are kind of really showing what they think of teens - that its all simple.

I am 16 and i am in the first year of my high school. I picked a normal high school, aka a gymnasium, without any kind of specialization. What I am now realizing was a complete mistake. A LOT of kids chose this school as we all thought it will elongate our decision of future by 4 years, until we need to chose collage. WE WERE SO WRONG. Cuz the only thing people aka teachers talk about in this school is future this, future that. When you are going to go to collage, when you will be a doctor, when you will be a lawyer, when you, when you, when you...all the time 24/7 we get this.

It might be just me, but I truly feel lost now. These people keep talking about future as if we are not 15/16 year old KIDS! I find it crazy that they expect us all to already know what we are going to be doing for the rest of our lives at 14, when most people pick schools. I picked my school choice high on wonyoungism and self help literature, but i just cant keep it up forever. I have no idea what the future will be like and I believe that people should STOP constantly talking to TEENS about it.

Most of my friends and other people of my age range are stuck in endless anxiety of what are we going to do when we are older. We are expected to already know, but instead we are all stuck, thinking that we need to start making money NOW or we will die in our adult years.

So that all being said, thank you for coming to my ted talk, sorry that its SO long! Of course if you want to add something, you can in the replies! I also get that a lot of you might not relate to this and say "i am a teen, i dont feel this way so you saying its most people of this age range is WRONG!" and to that I say: shut. You do not go to my school, you are not raised in my culture and you do not hang out and meet the same people like me.

I might make this into a video script and release it as a video but until then

GOODBAIIII!