<p>Rub-A-Dub, an Asian-American friend of mine who read your post suggested some questions to ask yourself:</p>
<p>“What truly matters to you? Try to get to the root motivations of your parents’ desires for you: Is it all for their pride and glory, or does your happiness and well-being have any place in their thinking? What is the worst-case scenario if you change course? What is the worst-case scenario if you DON’T change course? Are you willing to live with the consequences of your choice?”</p>
<p>My friend also believes that despite initial grief and disappointment, most parents will eventually come to realize the importance of their child’s happiness. “It may take them years, but my feeling is that they will come around,” she says. </p>
<p>I agree with my friend. Furthermore, I also challenge Asian Americans to consider what PARENTS owe their CHILDREN. Yes, it’s almost a subversive notion because we’re raised to always think about our parents’ wishes and what we owe them for their sacrifices. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a noble thing to acknowledge and to honor all that your parents have done for you. But does that entitle them to make major life decisions for you that might ultimately ruin your happiness?</p>
<p>For a startling and thought-provoking take on this, watch an old movie called, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Sidney Poitier plays an impeccable, young African-American doctor who falls in love with a white woman and proposes marriage to her. Just one problem: It’s the 1960s, interracial marriage is still illegal in some states, and his father, a mail carrier, is incensed. He doesn’t object to the young woman, who also possesses fine character. But he flies into town to try to talk his son out of the marriage.</p>
<p>The father starts by telling his son that he isn’t trying to tell him how to live his life, but he strongly wants the engagement broken. “Have you thought about what people would say about you?” the father asks. “You’re way out of line, boy.”</p>
<p>“That’s for me to decide, Dad,” the doctor begins. But his father cuts him short with a guilt trip. </p>
<p>“I worked my ass off to get the money to buy you all the chances you had. You know how far I carried that mailbag in thirty years? Seventy-five-thousand miles and mowing lawns in the dark so you wouldn’t have to be stoking furnaces and could bear down on the books,” the irate father says. “Are you going to tell me now that that means nothing to you?”</p>
<p>The young doctor loves his father–in fact, he tells the old man that he always will–but he realizes that he must stand up to his father over such a monumental decision.</p>
<p>"You say you don’t want to tell me how to live my life? So what do you think you’ve been doing? You tell me what rights I’ve got or haven’t got and what I owe you for what you’ve done for me?</p>
<p>“Let me tell you something,” the son says. “I owe you nothing if you had carried that bag for a million miles. You did what you were SUPPOSED to do because you brought me into this world and from that day, YOU owed ME everything you could ever do for me, like I will owe my son someday if I ever have one. But you don’t own me. You can’t tell me when or where I’m out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don’t even know what I am, Dad. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know how I feel or what I think.”</p>
<p>The old man is thunderstruck. His son is right. The father has never considered his son’s feelings, nor has he considered that he owes his son a measure of freedom and genuine happiness. </p>
<p>So yes, obligations can flow upstream, but also downstream. When your parents gave you life, what did they owe you from that point on?</p>