The System by Kiley Griffin
/We live in a world where we are taught to be ourselves
To express our ideas and stand up for what we believe in
"Be creative, Kiley," they told me, "be creative, be who you are and be bold"
But there's something our mommy's and daddy's left untold
Being ourselves didn't mean any of those things
It meant say please and thank you and smile even when it stings
Because no one likes a sad little girl who lets you know she's sad
"You need to strive, Kiley, you need to strive to be the best, where is your motivation drive,
Is there something wrong with you? A loose screw or two?
Your life is uninspired, Kiley why are you always so tired?"
I'm tired because every day I wake up and go to class
And learn pointless facts like how to identify sassafras
Then I go to several of my extracurriculars
And still learn nothing in particular
After that I get to come home and be asked what I learned in school today
Today in school I learned not to walk fast and not to speak too loud
I learned to keep my eyes on my own paper and my head down
and if I don't know the answer to just fill in C
Because the greatest lessons we learn,
on how to be ourselves,
are the ones no one really remembers learning
"Did you get 8 hours of sleep? Did you grab breakfast, what did you eat?
I hope you did all your homework
C'mon, Kiley you need to do this stuff like clockwork.
Don't you know that a 4.0
is too low?
Your classes better be all AP
Cause that's what colleges want to see"
But my life isn't a cup of tea
There's only 24 hours in a day
and that's not long enough you say?
"What about your community service hours?
You can't hang around with the wallflowers
You're not interesting enough.
You need to listen to the rules, Kiley
You need to listen and not have something go in one ear and out the other
Why can't you just be more like your brother
He was an excellent student
Always maintained a silence that was prudent"
The school system in our country is rigged
The ones who learned to agree and follow the crowd are the ones who succeed
If you're not one of them they will try to force feed you discipline until you finally concede
If you stand out and refuse to be someone you're not
It won't be easy and you might feel like you're alone
People certainly won't put you on a throne
You will not be anyone's highness or majesty
But you must not become a high school casualty
If you stand up and be yourself
not the please-and-thank-you-smile-through-the-pain you
But the you that you were meant to be
Everything will work itself out even if you leave with a bruised knee
Because all those other people you see?
One day you'll wake up say "Yeah, they all work for me"
But only if you don't let the pressure get to you
Don't let the stress stick to you like glue
And if all the stressful things start to build a lot of walls
Then you go and grab a sledgehammer to knock down them all
Because you're stronger than this, we're all stronger than this
Just know that this, this is not your whole life
One day you'll grow older, find a husband or maybe a wife
Your life, is more than this
But you have to decide now who you want to be
Are you going to be the employer or the employee?
