Live for Yourself: A Father's Advice on Authentic Choices

Introduction: A Father's Guiding Principle

The best advice my father ever gave me was to live for yourself and not for other people. By that, he did not mean to live selfishly; in fact, he suggested that doing for others was one of the most fulfilling experiences one could have. Rather, by "live for yourself" he meant to make choices that reflected my personal thoughts and opinions instead of choices made to impress strangers or to fit in with any group.

At first, I thought his advice was something I already knew — until he pointed out examples I recognized in my friends, my acquaintances, and even in my own life. He explained the many ways people make choices for others and suggested that, in many cases, the individuals making those choices were completely unaware of their true motivation.

Social Conformity and Group Identity

For instance, my father brought up the topic of clothing choices among some of my high school friends and reminded me how often "trends" traveled from the highest-status individuals down through the rest of the school. We also discussed the way that even the different social cliques that prided themselves on not being "followers" followed many of the same social rules as the parts of society they claimed to reject.

Instead of mirroring the particular values of mainstream social themes, they had established alternate identities — but had simply shifted from the symbolism and goals they rejected to different behaviors that served the same underlying purpose.

According to my father, there was nothing necessarily wrong with any particular clothing style or music choice in and of itself; the issue was that members of these groups made choices about personal identity in exactly the same way as everyone who accepts more traditional elements of social identity does. The irony, he said, is that they often do this while criticizing people who adopt mainstream cultural values as "followers."

Drinking Culture and Social Pressure

My father also pointed out how groupthink is evident in common social rituals such as drinking, especially among college-age students. We discussed the phenomenon of drinking games like "quarters" and "beer pong" — in particular, the curious fact that if the enjoyment of drinking were the real point, drinking should function as a reward for winning a round. Most drinking games, however, work backwards from that logic.

He explained that, again, there is nothing wrong with the decision to drink responsibly under appropriate social circumstances. The real issue has to do with the way people — especially at my age — tend to drink in patterns where the individual is "encouraged" by various forms of social pressure to drink more than he or she would without that pressure. I recognized the accuracy of his characterization when I thought about how often I had been in situations where people who tended to drink more than others exerted pressure on everyone else to drink more, or faster — through comments that framed the quantity of alcohol consumed as "achievement" and restraint as a "failure" worthy of ridicule.

Conclusion: Honest Self-Examination

My father summed up his advice with the suggestion that I always consider what my honest motivation is for my choices in life, even when there is nothing necessarily objectionable about the specific choices in and of themselves. The goal is not to reject any particular behavior, but to understand the true reason behind it — and to ensure that reason is genuinely your own.