There are certain aspects of the child-parent relationship that never change. When we are little kids, we go running to mom or dad with a scraped knee or if we have a bad dream. When we are teenagers, most of us want nothing more than for them to leave us the heck alone. When we go to college, we realize we actually do like these people we call our parents and go home on weekends to eat food we didn’t pay for and do laundry.

Even after college, most of us will move back home-even those of us who have jobs-just to help us start off until we can find our own place.

One can understand why children (no matter how old we get, in our parents eyes, we are still children) would want to do things that make their parents proud.

There is a limit, however.

At some point, one has to start thinking about one’s own happiness. Studying a particular subject or getting a particular job that your parents want for you is lunacy. It shows a lack of independent thought and frankly, weakness.

I never did what my parents wanted me to during high school or college, and I haven’t regretted a second of it. My mother didn’t want me to participate in wrestling or football in junior high and high school, but I did, and I don’t regret it. It was fun, got me in shape and was a wonderful catharsis and healthy outlet for my aggression.

She wanted me to go to community college and stay home for one or two more years. Absolutely not. I went to Millikin University to study music and then here to study communications. And though there were difficult times, times of doubt and times where I asked myself, “Do I have any idea at all what the f$#% I’m doing?!” life has brought me to the exact place I was meant to be. My experiences and mistakes I have made have shaped me into a better and stronger person, and a happier one, as well. I would like to think all parents do the very best they know how for their kids. They are still human, and they were children once, too. They do not always know for certain what is best.

The person who tells me they want a Catholic wedding when he or she is not Catholic because their parents would “freak out” if he or she didn’t is a person I consider weak and dependent. If you want a Catholic wedding, then have one, but do it because you want to.

If you want to study business and go for your MBA, do it because you want to. If you aren’t sure what to do, then take some time off and work, but continue to explore universities and majors until you find one that fits what you want to do.

Are you sensing a pattern here? I’m not saying flip the bird to your parents and rebel against everything they want for you. We all need some fatherly or motherly love from time to time, no matter how old we get. But we have to grow into adults ourselves and go after what we want to do and what we want to learn.

If we don’t, we will never be happy. Here’s how that scenario will go: Study something in college we don’t like, graduate with a degree we don’t want, get a job we can’t stand, marry someone our parents approve of but we have our doubts about, have kids because it’s “what we’re supposed to do,” raise them in the exact same way our parents raised us because we never questioned our upbringing, but this time, our kids are independently minded, they wind up resenting us, our spouse blames us, we get divorced and now we have no marriage, children that can’t stand us, and at the end of it all, we wound up disappointing our parents anyway because we couldn’t think for ourselves.