Social Expectations

Everybody has experienced it. You walk into a room full of friends and your attitude changes. You treat people differently than you would if you were alone, you change your actions, and you morph your personality to fit what you think everyone around you expects of you. Why do we let ourselves succumb to negative social expectations? Social expectations limit who you are. You can’t display your personality if you are changing it to make the people around you happy. Limitations on who you can be will only hurt you in the long run. When you leave your group of friends, who will you be then? You won’t have a support system to guide your actions like before. You won’t have a personality to attract other people; you’ll be left to find another group of people to mimic in order to have a feeling of belonging. If you are always trying to change yourself to fit a group image how can you stand yourself? The scariest part of the ramifications of negative social expectations is when you are left alone with your thoughts. When you’re lying in your bed before sleeping and you’re just left to think, what will you think about yourself? Will you know who you are? Are you just going to think about how you made yourself fit in? Will you be able to think anything on your own character? Don’t change yourself to fit what other people around you want to see, just be you. These expectations can hurt people around you as well. Suppose a group of people feels that they need to put other people down. Should bullying be condoned because of social expectations? How does that affect the people who are being bullied? Look around our school if you want to see it. How many people get made fun of everyday when a group of people gets together? How many times do you see a group of people reject a person from joining an activity or sport because they’re “weird” or “lame”? A kid in Wauwatosa recently committed suicide because of bullying. He wasn’t even in high school. He wasn’t even in middle