Reborn II

I can’t wait for the freedom that is to follow.  The freedom from old restrictions and assumptions in the parent-child relationship. Things were going so well, I was on the way to completing my games, I was close to wrapping up several of my projects. I was almost able to help my  parents understand and evolve to the next level of being. That’s when everything fell apart because of my mother’s sickness.

All of a sudden, all the progress gets erased and we doubled back from the road we came from. All the weird quirks in my mom’s personality gets amplified ten fold, which in turn amplified my father’s personality flaws. In the process, I went into the deepest depression ever. Everything becomes a guilt trip “You gotta do this because mom is sick, you can’t do this because mom is sick.” Once I accepted one restriction, I accepted others until one day I woke up realizing that I am completely not my own man anymore.

You have to live it to understand.

Asian parents I find, think that it is the most natural thing in the world for their kids to serve their every whims because we, their kids, owe them our lives. While the western culture, it’s actually shameful to impose these type of impediments to your kids once they turned adult. I’ve made it perfectly clear that I can financially survive by myself out of my current income and am ready to move out at any time, but they were adamant that I should stay because it’s only a few more months until they completely immigrate back to Taiwan. Logic, and their promise of potential self inflicted damage if I don’t help out on certain thing are the two cards that I haven’t found anyway to defend against. Yes, it doesn’t make sense to move out now since I will have to be here most of the time to get rid of stuff. Yes, they would suffer a lot of disadvantages if they do certain things instead of me because I am better at those things. I am sure that it doesn’t exactly happen like mine does in other traditional Asian based families, but the core of it is the same and in general, I find that this kills the child’s sense of independence and self respect. This defeated sense that you acknowledged someone else’s rule over you. It kills innovation.

I am often aghast at the type of things they impose upon me, yet whenever I check with people from “home” they talk as if it’s the most normal request ever. This tells me that what we have on hand is a severe case of cultural gap. This is brought to the forefront at a dinner table where my parents were discussing the strange idea of “going dutch” with their friends. It’s the same type of cultural differences as the Swedish couple riding tricycles in China sparking a firestorm of debate within its Netizens. Just as I would be seen as just another poor schmuck in China, if I were to ride a bicycle there, while the Swedish couple towing their kids behind with their tricycle made people realized the difference in lifestyle.

I don’t think I can continue this series without password protecting the future entries. They go too much into details for them not to be damaging to certain people. So I will just say here that I apologize to those who knew me back in those 4 years of University, for being the person that I was. I am truly sorry that you had to endure my personality back then.