When do you start living..?

Another walk down a strange road,another anonymous face,feeling safer minding your possessions; Wouldn't dream of crossing a swinging drawbridge.
But is it instinct for safety? Or just fear for what might be?
Are we too conditioned to live by another's example that we forget to make our own?

Career counselling: for not making mistakes; provided with just one lifetime after all, so much to do with so little time, no room for blunders.
Racecar driving can wait.. that can be taken as a hobby right? Sure when you're fifty you'll have enough leisure, capital. And suure your retired legs and eyes would support your childhood dream.. let's just get that MBA right now.
Painting? Pshaww.. what was your childhood self thinking.. You need to become an engineer, like your elder brother! Mommy knows best. Look how many proposals he's got!
And brother would just be sitting there, looking into your eyes, begging with you in his mind to garner the courage to do something he wanted, not do something just because it's a successful route, the courage he wished he'd had.

Your friends, family, confidants- Always there to look out for you, to help you choose right from wrong, which is all well and amiable.
But is it always corrections? Or is it fear for not choosing accurately? Choosing the aberrant for easy; taking the longer way out?

How often do you ponder over choosing the darkened cloud over the silver-lined one; or the road not taken, from the trodden, as Robert Frost would say. How often would you take up challenges just for the heck of it- stand in a ring, with whatever abilities you have, even if you have to fight the The Incredible Hulk himself, knowing that if you do beat him, you know you're much stronger than you thought; and if tables turn, you've still got your integrity intact and you can still impersonate Freddie Mercury and sing yourself away as a champion nonetheless.

Ofcourse they think for your best, ofcourse they want to rectify your erroneous imaginative minds, but how far should you be embarking on what's been told to you?
When do you start making your own choices?
When do you start tracing paths for yourself?
When do you start breathing in your own freedom?
When do you start Living?