Nobody told me what challenges my life or my future would hold, or what life would look like as I grew older.
Nobody REALLY told me.
Nobody told me which path to take and where it would REALLY lead.
Nobody told me what financial independence would mean for someone like me at eighteen. What is financial reality, and what would the difference between being a criminal and having a ‘normal’ job actually involve?
What if someone had convinced me that it was possible to work for a few years, save money and buy a home like everyone else? Or perhaps, for someone like me who enjoys entrepreneurship, something even better: building my own business with the freedom to make my own choices.
Nobody told me what it takes to run your own business and make decisions that can determine whether it survives.
Could you ask people with knowledge and experience? Who would they be? Does everyone know an entrepreneur or a managing director who is willing to spend time with you — an ordinary young person with big dreams and ambitions?
Or do we have to go to Altinn.no and search for answers we barely understand? Perhaps skatteetaten.no or innovasjonnorge.no.
Who will tell me what all those sentences mean, and what I can do with them? Do you have to be good at school or have parents with a reasonably strong academic understanding?
Nobody told me how to write a contract between two parties. Nobody told me how to find examples of contracts or put one together based on other examples. Is it really that easy to do these things alone? Is it me against everyone else? Does everyone know a lawyer or someone skilled in legal matters?
A contract is just one of many examples of what running a business involves. Isn't the goal to create jobs and an innovative environment, here in Norway or globally? Make it simple. Nobody should grow up, become an adult and still be stuck with these four words: ‘Nobody told me that.’
Why should it be so difficult for a young person from a working-class or struggling family to start a business, with no one to explain how to succeed in business without becoming a criminal?
Is it a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and having the right friends and contacts? Must I know the entire ‘book of business’? That may be wise, yes — but nobody told me that.
Am I supposed to get an education, struggle through school and then take a job I don't want? Nobody told me or showed me that there are other possibilities for someone like me who wants to create something of their own: the possibility of building stone by stone, starting from scratch, and finding myself in five or ten years on the same path as the role models I had when I was young.
Would it be better to work instead of pursuing higher education, save every penny I can, and then risk everything I own on a business? But who will tell me what nobody told me when I saw what I wanted? Nobody around me was sufficiently capable or had enough expertise to tell me.
I was told to pursue higher education. That was it. What were its advantages? What were its disadvantages? What if I wasn't ready for it, or had no motivation or willingness to do it? Does that mean I have no interest in doing other things in life that could move me forward? Nobody told me. Is that when I am supposed to take the wrong path, towards what is forbidden and most harmful? Nobody stopped me from doing that.
What if I am not good at school? Who will tell me what I should do with my life, or which choices would be right and most beneficial, so that I either return to education or follow a path into working life? Is it my parents, who care about me and put it so simply: you must focus on school, because then you will have a good life?
Nobody told me the consequences of not attending school or having a job to go to. Nobody focused on it or truly meant that I REALLY SHOULD pull myself together and commit to school or pursue an active working life.
What were the consequences? Nobody REALLY told me, or spoke with a genuine voice in a way that made me listen realistically and seriously. Yes, perhaps someone said it in a way you understood at the time, but did it reach you? Did it stay with you, so that you made changes?
What are the consequences when nobody tells you or me about the challenges we face as young adults? Are we talking about having no job, no home, no friends, drugs, or becoming a criminal?
Nobody REALLY told me what it meant to be in the right environment and have the right friends. Must I figure all of that out for myself, with so many people on this planet? Must I, as a young person, search for and explore ideas about right and wrong when the answers exist in countless people with experience? Shouldn't it be easy to find an answer to what a young person wants from life, when society is full of different views about life and the choices one can or should make — so that I can make the most obvious and beneficial choice for me as an individual?
I am not saying everyone has it this way. I speak for those who fall behind or have fallen outside, the people nobody REALLY told.
Share this with someone nobody told.
