"Asian parents don't love each other!" a friend in high school boldly proclaimed in the cafeteria.
Yes, this was a very generalizing statement about the general nature of traditional Asian marriages, but I thought about it for a while. And it was said from my friend, a first-generation Asian-American, to myself, also a first-generation Asian-American. It was a critique on the overall prioritization of duty and obligation over actual love. While I won't say that the marriage between my parents was completely loveless, both my parents definitely pushed through much marital strife out of a desire to make things appear harmonious, to keep the family together, and because they saw it as their duty to just "deal with" all their frustrations so we could have the whole family under the same household.
I used to have a very limiting view towards divorce. I never wanted to get divorced, not out of any religious imperative but because my parents had a messy divorce and I saw the divorce, in my childhood, as a source of unhappiness. Now, however, I see that the greater evil is to keep the family together and pretend like everything is working when it isn't, that it is much better to blow up the system than it is to keep putting band-aids on what isn't working. No one goes into a marriage wanting a divorce later. For biblical reasons, I'm going to do my best to resolve conflict well within my own future marriage, but no one can tell the future.
Anyways, duty and obligation not only take precedence in a marriage, but in the relationship between Asian kids and their parents. Communicating with grandparents and relatives in China was always a duty. Speaking and learning the native language was a duty. Having a fierce commitment to my education was a duty, as was doing what my parents wanted me to do. Now that I'm older, the duty is to become a doctor as the "golden child" of my family. I'm a teacher and I love my job, but the pull of what's expected of me looms very large every single day. I take my life one day at a time, but I struggle with the more traditional expectations of duty versus where my heart and passion lie. I cringe at the thought that my life choices can be seen by the larger, status-obsessed Asian culture as a trophy for making my family look good.
Look, a lot of people want their kids to be doctors, lawyers, or engineers. But when the entire pride and hopes of your family hinges on you making a prestigious career choice, well, you can imagine the pressure that puts on you. It is much easier said than done to be like "this is my life and I'm going to live it the way I want" when you grow up with the traditional and conservative expectations of duty and obligation of an Asian family. We talk about unconditional love frequently, but unconditional love is the exception rather than the norm, in my experience, in a lot of Asian families. I struggle with whether it is that way in my own, although I sincerely hope it isn't.
Two of my uncles had their marriages arranged. In some weird way, my parents have tried to do the same for my brother when he's had problems with his relationships. I keep my personal life and my family life very, very separate with firm boundaries. I know that can sound like an oxymoron, but I tend more to tell my parents nothing about my relationships, my friends, and personal interests. Our values simply occupy different worlds, from my perspective. They wouldn't understand the things I struggle with and wrestle with because they believe the singular focus of my life is my work, career, and academics.
I don't know if I can necessarily blame traditional Asian households or even my parents for the disconnect between their values and most of myself and most of my Asian friends that grew up in the U.S. Master of None is perhaps the show that most closely represents the Asian-American experience in America -- and the what I wished the most of what the protagonist, Dev, had was a father that was supportive of his choice to be an actor.
The show clearly shows the sacrifices most Asian parents had to make for their kids to have better lives in America. These sacrifices in my life include being distant from the closest of family members, coming to a country where you don't speak the language well, and have no money. To this day, although my family has better financial means, my friends, when they meet my parents, frequently talk about how they understood absolutely nothing my parents said because of their accents.
"You realize fun is a new thing, right?" Dev's father says in the show. "Fun is a luxury only your generation really has."
Maybe the disconnect is just communication. I don't know enough about the struggles my parents deal with on a daily basis, and they don't know that much about mine. Not only is it a generational gap, but it's a very cultural one as well. My parents don't expect for me to make a career choice that I want because they never had a choice themselves. They chose the paths to secure a better future for not only us as their kids, but their families back in China. They couldn't make actual love and passion a priority because they never had that option themselves.
I am not going to live to please my parents. I made a firm stance against that way of living a very long time ago. It was through my own freedom, independence, and figuring things out by myself with my friends that I came to find my voice. I have, however, learned a lot from my parents for how to love as a first-generation Asian-American. First, I don't put familial duty and obligation as a priority in my life. I'm sorry, but I just don't. I don't do well with a predestined path of what I'm supposed to do.
Still, I love my parents. They struggled for a long time, perhaps, for me to feel exactly the way I do, for my independence, freedom, and following my passion and pursuit. I was able to explore my faith because of decisions my parents made, one of the most influential events of my life. So while I refuse to live life and commit to the same values my parents do, I understand that the way I behave and think is not possible had it not been for them working every day to do the best they could for me. Call it luxury. Call it privilege. I only have it because of them in so many ways, even if we struggled for a lot of my childhood, we still kept afloat.
I might or might not become a doctor, but one thing I know for sure is that I'm so lucky to be an inner-city teacher living in my favorite city in the world -- all this would not be possible had they not sacrificed so much for me. Love, to me, as a first-generation Asian-American, means living my life with the utmost gratitude for those sacrifices.
