JohnHard to believe, but my wife and I finally moved out of my parent’s house!
I can already hear the whispers; “Whut? He still lives with his parents..?“.
So a little context; In our traditional Hmong culture, the youngest male of the family is automatically volunteered to spend the rest of his life with his parents. In essence, what that means is that the youngest male would eventually take care of the parents forever, in the same house.
With that context in mind, it is usually a culture shock to the parents when their youngest son has ambitions of doing more than just living with them for the rest of their lives; and that is definitely how my parents felt when my wife and I first told them about our plans to move out. It was definitely hard to tell them and I could tell they were ready to unleash the lecture of the century. Fortunately, they said they understood but that still came with words that dealt with “culture“, “abandonment“, and “you don’t understand anything“.
In my defense, I firmly believe that life has many things to offer, and I felt as if occupying the same household with others often distracted me from my goals. Not being able to come home and do exactly what I want to do to excel my career and life can become frustrating when it’s a repeating scenario, day-after-day. When life becomes a standard cycle, I usually fall into “auto-pilot” mode, which ultimately leads me into some form of depression because I don’t feel like I’ve progressed in anything I’ve done. I also know you are thinking “well other people can do it, why can’t you?“. My simple answer to that is because we’re not all the same.
In any event, the move has been bittersweet. On one hand, I now have the room and bandwidth to concentrate on my personal goals such as my MBA or acquiring skills to improve my career. On the other hand, I feel as if there is a deep scar on my heart because I know my parents feel like I’ve stepped all over them and the hard work they’ve done to help me get to where I am today.
My mom asked me the other day if I needed anything from her for my move. The only thing I thought of when she asked me was that I wanted her to be happy for me; but of course I didn’t say that. In reality, she probably somewhat is, but I’m sure it’s not 100%.
So far, the move has proved to be beneficial. Let’s hope the advantages persist.