Living Up To Your Parents’ Expectations

We often wonder, 

  Why do we have to live up to our parents’ expectations? 

  Why do we have to be happy living someone else’s dream rather than ours? 

  Why can’t we shoot our own movie rather than starring in someone else’s?  

These questions have been bugging us ever since we started to try to live up to our parents’ expectations. The answer, somewhere, lies in the phenomenon that we love our parents and they are the ones who care for us, so we want to give them the perfect child they want to have.

We think that since we are new to this world and our parents have been living longer, they know the best and they love us, so they want the best for us. We try to push ourselves into roles they want us to be. Many parents often tell their children that they would have been happy and glad if he was a girl or if she was a boy. This makes us feel unwanted, unlovable or simply a disappointment to the family. Parents also say that they wanted us to be like them, but they don’t understand that it is ok if we have different interests or hobbies because we are a different person. While choosing a certain occupation, many parents want their children to be doctors or engineers, but in the world of today with a thousand other fields, they still want us to become what they wanted for themselves and we try our best to do that.

We may be trying hard to reach these expectations but we are ignoring the side effects of living someone else’s dream. We are emotionally hurt when we don’t accomplish, we are a victim of stress, anxiety and blame ourselves for it. We often grow up thinking that we are indeed a failure, a disappointment and a bad person. We often struggle with toxic guilt and shame. We are also confused about who we really are since we have been conditioned not to be ourselves and be whatever we are expected to be.

 After all, our parents also want what is good for us and we, on the other hand, want the same as well. We both want a better future and a good life for ourselves. The only problematic thing is that they want us to walk down a beaten road, whereas we want to spread our wings and fly. The only little divergence is in the means. They won’t understand us now and maybe we won’t understand them too, but we will eventually get around. We can try not to disappoint them because their love for us is unconditional. And even if we fail, it is always okay to do things which are unexpected for us.