These essays will serve as a way to capture my chaotic thoughts in no particular, logical order.
Prelude
My eyes are closed as I lie on the backseat of the car. I can feel the familiar bumps on my favorite way home. Everything felt like a peaceful blur until I hit the turbulence of immigrating to the States.
My immigrant story was quite typical: lower-middle class upbringing, language barriers, cultural tensions, economic instability, and tiger parents.
I never felt like I truly belonged to either the East or the West. And despite the undeniable sacrifices my parents made to give me a better life, my memories growing up were honestly mostly painful ones. Forced to study SAT vocabulary since third grade (very inefficient strategy), attending violin/piano lessons on Saturdays, and orchestra practice and volunteering at hospitals on Sundays. In high school, I ran XC and track after school, got home, showered, and passed out for a few minutes (sometimes while showering). I found myself still face-to-face with assignments at 3am, mentally preparing to wake up a few hours later. I was perpetually coffee-infused and chronically fell asleep in class.
To be completely frank, I don’t think this lifestyle and grind is inherently bad whatsoever. The real issue was that I didn’t love anything I was doing, and I grew up in an environment that discouraged being outspoken or having independent thoughts.
Interlude
While I was in elementary school, my younger brother was born with a spectrum of medical conditions. So, while my parents maintained the highest expectations of me, they actually paid me little attention — an abyss between us that grew over time.
In retrospect, this separation was the best gift they could have given me. As poor immigrants starting over in a new country, all they knew was putting food on our table and a roof over our heads. This survival mentality crippled their ability for upward mobility because they were conditioned to think exclusively in the short-term. Their financial literacy was lost in the piles of credit cards, loans, and lottery tickets. Internally, it seemed they had long accepted their place in life.
So, where did I end up deriving my core values and fundamentals from? This was a question that bubbled to the surface of my life throughout my romantic relationships, and the honest answer is: “I’m not sure”. My partners were always confused by the jarring discrepancy between my world views and principles when compared with those of my parents. I have extreme examples to highlight this, but I won’t be sharing those for privacy reasons.
Reflections
Detached from my parents’ philosophies, I believe my core values were (and continue to be) derived from observations of the world coupled with deep, internal processing. I have always spent most of my time wrestling with what feels like a storm in my mind, and I wanted to start writing again to bring external feedback back into my thought process. I don’t think my experience, or any experience for that matter, is ever truly unique. But I think this first essay will provide some important context for my future musings, and I hope they may also be useful for strangers that stumble across my page.