I was having a conversation with my friend about how my life wasn't exclusively mine, and how the choices I make has to be under the approval of my parents. My Australian friend retorted that it was preposterous how my life was perpetually tethered to my parents. In the end, we agreed to disagree. He believed in complete autonomy, while I believed in...well... I'm not too sure.
Let's get to it:
It's difficult to retain strong Asian values when you are bombarded with Western media and education. My friends and I have been taught to be open-minded, but not too open minded as to push away our Asian principles. Our parents sent us abroad for university to study, yet they don't want us to come back home brimming with Western values. We received the education and life lessons that our parents weren't privileged enough to be exposed to, and with that comes the consequence of raising a child trapped between two different worlds.
The dichotomy between Western and Asian values have always been a point of contention between my family and I. There are certain aspects of life that I would handle differently than my sister or even my friends. My father, who is split down the middle between the two cultures, taught me the Asian principles of elderly respect, religion, and familial bond, while simultaneously teaching me to be open minded about the prospect of new ideas and beliefs. However my mother has absolutely no understanding of Western values and continues to berate me for my 'whiteness' and my 'white' way of doing things. As if there is a right culture and a wrong one.
It is difficult to be exclusively one or the other once you've been exposed to both equally growing up. So I became an Asian-Western hybrid; flowing between the two opposing values depending on the situation. We are inundated with different values and ideas, so much so that we don't know what to do with the knowledge given to us. How do I accept and integrate new ways of thinking into age-old Asian traditions? The problem is that either we become too Western in an Asian community or too Asian in a Western community. We are afraid to identify ourselves as Asian or Western, because we are neither but an odd portmanteau of both. We end up making mistakes and poor decisions by holding such opposing beliefs.
The two biggest issues for me and perhaps my friends as well, is holding on to feminist beliefs in a historically patriarchal society, as well as being an independent entity separate from my family. The former proves to be difficult to do, because whenever I dare to speak my mind about a certain feminist issue, I am answered with a simple, "that's just the way it is." I have, time and time again, been the one to call out rules and societal norms that aren't in favor of a certain group of people. However, I have never been met with a satisfactory response from those who hear my pleas. Instead, they tell me that I am 'too Western' and that I shouldn't think that way. That as an Asian, I shouldn't think such liberal and radical thoughts. I am surrounded by people who have been raised in a red room who refuse to look out the window to see the colors outside. But I end up challenging them anyway, arguing to them about sexism in the country and all the issues buried underneath the carpet. Something our culture is very good at doing. Thousand year-old patriarchy isn't going to change anytime soon, and feminism? Well, feminism is a movement that us Asians look with intrigue from afar. With binoculars and popcorn.
The biggest challenge for my friends and I is to live our own lives the way we want to. That's what I tried to explain to my friend. Whilst he has the carte blanche to live his life to the fullest 'as long as he's happy,' most of us Asians make career choices based on how happy it would make our parents. I feel like I owe it to them—the people who birthed me, raised me, fed me, clothed me, and educated me for the past 19 years—to make them proud and happy. After all, they have given and sacrificed so much that it would be utterly selfish of me to go my own way once I have turned 18 and leave them to their own devices. It's not that our parents are forcing us to go down a certain path (well, for some, it is), but it's our ingrained conscience that doesn't let us to stray away from that path. We are so overly grateful for the blessings that have been provided to us that we feel the need to give back, and more often than not, giving back doesn't mean moving to Spain to follow my dreams to become a flamenco dancer. Giving back means making our parents proud, happy, and satisfied that they have done their job well. This conscience to reciprocate kindness to our parents interferes with the Western principle of 'do what makes you happy' and 'this is your life'. So I end up on a bridge between the desire to please my generous parents and my own individualistic needs.
I will always be in the wrong because whatever decision I make, I will receive some sort of backlash from the opposing culture. What I do right in one culture, it is wrong in the other. At the end of the day, all I can do is hope I have
made the right decisions from the options given to me. And maybe, just maybe, people will understand my choices and not strangle me for betraying my own culture.
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