“We’re afraid we’re never going to see you again.”
The words hung in the air over the kitchen counter. My mom had that wild look in her eye, the one that meant she was really serious, desperate even.
She insisted it was all about Mexico. Why Mexico, Meg? Why did you have to choose Mexico of all places? But I had a feeling it wasn’t just the country that gave her and my dad tremendous levels of anxiety. It was the fact that I insisted on traveling alone, and well, that I valued freedom and adventure much more than I valued things they were really into, such as stability and safety.
This wasn’t the first time, nor the second, nor the third, that I was making a change that was so completely not okay with them.
When I was 23, I moved to Italy by myself to see if I could make a life for myself there. I felt an overwhelming urge to go, one that was so strong, I almost couldn’t fight it. At the same time, I felt so much glorious excitement about the glimmering idea that I could do something so different, random, and potentially rewarding, that I was all systems go.
I remember my parents having the same type of reaction when I told them about Italy. There were some heated arguments, some intervals of no talking, some comments with sharp edges wielded from both sides.
I thought having been through this before would make it all easier. The truth is, every time my family tries to intervene, tries to ask me why I feel the need to make these choices that in turn cause worrying about me to become not only a full-time job, but also a sort of chronic thorn in the side, that sticks and pricks with no end in sight. Each time this happens, I’m struck by a wave of feelings where anger, annoyance, and the granddaddy of all family-related emotions, guilt, play protagonists.
We naturally want approval from the people closest to us. Of course we do. When we were little, we depended on our parents for everything, so in some bizarre-o way our survival was linked to staying in their good graces.
But more than that, we all need to know that we’re guaranteed a source of unconditional love. That “yeah kiddo, you should NOT have decked Penelope Lopez in the face for saying you were a big meanie, but you’ll apologize, we’ll work on some alternatives for expressing yourself and I love you anyway,” type of love.
This is why so many of us become doctors when we really want to be graphic designers. Live in our hometowns when our dream is to live out in L.A. Settle down and get married when what we really want is to never settle.
And let me tell you this. Doing things your family doesn’t approve of is hard. It’s hard as hell. But what’s harder is getting to the end of your life and wishing you could have a do-over.
I once heard an expression that sums up this phenomenon perfectly. It goes a little something like this, “Hard conversations, easy life. Easy conversations, hard life.”
You owe it to yourself to have those hard conversations so that you can live a life that is authentic to you. Where do you think those urges to go out and do big things come from? It’s not random. It’s your intuition, persistently knocking. You’re the only person who can hear it. The only person that can answer.
It takes courage, faith, and a strong sense of self to go against the wishes of your family. It ain’t easy and it sure ain’t always pretty.
But it’s worth it.
