↟↟𓂃 ོ ☼𓂃↟ 𖠰𓂃 ོ𓂃
A comment from a recent conversation with Rob has been lingering in my mind.
We were discussing politics, specifically the current regime in Indonesia, and the tendency to approach it in terms of right and wrong. I don’t necessarily disagree with that characterization. There are situations where I do see a moral dimension to things, where I find it difficult to reduce everything to strategy, pragmatism, or competing interests. Sometimes, at least for me, there is a meaningful distinction between what I believe is right and what I believe is wrong.
What stayed with me, however, was a different observation: that perhaps some of us see things this way because we were raised to.
The comment lingered. Which was unsurprising, given that I have spent too much time discussing some version of this question with Dayu, who looks at my family history and somehow concludes that what I need is more motherhood (my first instinct was to punch her).
⚘ 𖥧
I know our upbringing shapes us. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But I don’t experience my convictions as something I inherited passively. In fact, when I look at some of the views I hold today, they often feel quite distant from many of the values I was taught growing up.
Maybe part of my reaction comes from the fact that I have a complicated relationship with my mother.
What I don’t think people always appreciate is how difficult it can be to examine, challenge, and sometimes resist the values you grew up with. It takes effort to question assumptions that once felt unquestionable, to unlearn certain ways of thinking, and to decide for yourself what you believe.
And sometimes, the price of that choice is a relationship. Accepting a distance from the people who raised you.
𓆱
Growing up, I was surrounded in a culture where parents are often seen as the primary authors of who their children become. Careers, marriages, beliefs, and life choices are frequently treated as extensions of the family itself.
In many Asian families, the relationship can feel almost inseparable: if the fruit is good, the tree deserves the credit; if the fruit is flawed, the tree is blamed. But adulthood has complicated that metaphor for me. At some point, the fruit is no longer hanging from the tree. (This is why I was never destined for a political dynasty, lmao.)
And perhaps what I keep coming back to is this: I don’t think my parents deserve all the credit for the values I hold today, just as I don’t think they deserve all the blame for the ways in which I fall short.