Culture Shock - From Within
I think I’m finding the disparity from within.
When I was young, everything was easy and carefree. Life was
bliss. Without a care in the world, my parents were my world. You know how you
always ran to your Mom or Dad when you fell, or that teacher at school wasn’t
very nice to you? You could always run back to your parents.
Then came the time I didn’t want to. I think it started in
middle school, and I realized that I didn’t want to, I couldn’t talk to my
parents about anything. First it was age, then it was culture. I got older,
then went to the American school, and was inculcated with the ideology that I
am my own person. I am a free man. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t still
the love for parent and child in that culture, but independence comes sooner. At 18, you leave
the house and start supporting yourself, and then you have your family, you
drift apart.
In Asian culture, you’re supposed to live at home till you
get married, even when you’re working. And, when you get married and have
children, your parents stay with you and you take care of them till they pass
on. Filial piety has a different meaning.
While I might have grown up in that environment and that
culture, I’ve drifted away to that more independent and self-reliant concept.
Therein lies the discrepancy.
More often than not, my Mom and I bicker about this or that,
we argue about my grades or discuss my lack of organization. I think it’s more
than that. It’s a different generation, it’s a different culture, it’s a
different perspective.
But it wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time, I was that
cute little Asian boy who looked up at his Mom, and Dad with those eyes that
would do whatever Mom and Dad wanted him to do. Then things changed. I grew up.
Here’s the question though. Do I really want to?
I’m not saying I want to move back in with my parents and
live with them till they die, but I also want a different relationship. I want
a relationship where we know and understand each other. I just finished a
movie, The Descendants, where it takes a tragedy in the family for them to
realize that screw-ups don’t really matter, that we all make mistakes, and we
all have our faults.
So what though? So what if we mess up and piss each other
off? At the end of it all, we’re family. Remember Lilo and Stitch, where Lilo
says "Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten."
I’ll be spending the summer at home, the first time I’ve
been home for longer than a month since I graduated from high school. It seems
so foreign to me, because my friends are my family now too. My parents want me
to go home earlier, but I’m struggling with that. I don’t know anyone there,
and I don’t know if I can spend that much time there. I'm excited tone with my parents, and my uncles and aunt, but my friends mean the world to me too.
A huge part of this dilemma, I think, is that I'm an only child. Being an only child makes you that way. Your friends are your family, because you don't have siblings who you grow up with or rely on. It kinda sucks sometimes. I have a few friends who I can count on one hand, who are like my siblings, thank goodness for them. But that's the thing, my friends are my support system.
A huge part of this dilemma, I think, is that I'm an only child. Being an only child makes you that way. Your friends are your family, because you don't have siblings who you grow up with or rely on. It kinda sucks sometimes. I have a few friends who I can count on one hand, who are like my siblings, thank goodness for them. But that's the thing, my friends are my support system.
Isn’t that terrible though? Not wanting to be at home? I’d
rather be with my friends, because it’s more fun. Family is fun too! Who chooses that? Maybe
that’s because part of my thinks I’ll find my wife if I spend the summer in
Provo, then that’s where I’ll have my own family, I’ll have security in that.
I feel so comfortable in Provo now, it is my home. But, Singapore is still where I grew up, and is my home too. I guess that at the end of the day, the people make the place.
I want my independence. I want to be my own person and make my own decisions. At the same time, family is everything, I love them So, I'm eventually going to have to reconcile both of them.
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