Anything you want, you can have
I grew up in India, but I grew up in Goa
Tangent: Talk about always being an outsider:
I was in Delhi in 2022, sitting at the back of a rickshaw when the driver asked in Hindi “Are you from India?”
I replied “Yes, from Goa”
He said, “That’s not what I asked, I asked are you from India (emphasized!)”.
And people think I feel like an outsider traveling the world😂
The best way I know to describe the difference of Goa vs India is marriage.
Never as a kid or as an adult did I ever have to consider arranged marriage. I went to school and especially college with people that I knew had to consider it, but my community was progressive enough that I grew up knowing I didn’t have to care about.
I’ll like to call people who had to deal with arranged marriage as “Indian freedom 0”
Now that doesn’t mean I could marry whoever I want without consequences, I think the freedom level I grew up with was best described as “yes you can get married to a musician but it’ll be used against you every single day of your life.”
Let’s call this “Indian Freedom 1”
Musician almost = someone from the same sex for the above example. A musician that’s also the same sex, damn boy you’re in trouble.
Now let’s take a break from India and let me quickly describe two more marriage freedoms
Immigrant freedom 0: first generation immigrant who has a bit more freedom than Indian freedom 1 in the fact that parents hold their tongue a bit more due to the new community around them.
Immigrant freedom 2: The immigrant is no longer an immigrant in the sense that they don’t have the cultural baggage in limitations of marriage. The richer the family, (up to a point, then nepotism plays a role) the more fine they’re in letting the child do whatever.
(Immigrate freedom 2 = Western Freedom 0)
All my best friends growing up were either Indian freedom 1 or immigrant freedom 0.
Now, I did something in 2022.
I got married and announced it a few weeks later to everyone on April fools. For 24 hours I didn’t text family back clear answers so they’d never know if it was a joke or not.
Another fact is that my dad has never met my wife and my mom only did once for a 30 minute dinner.
Here’s the interesting part: my parents weren’t upset or angry or sad about any of this.
It’s not even like I actively avoided meeting my father, the opposite actually, our travel plans just never matched up. So it was just circumstances the way some of you sometimes fail to meet a friend cause you were at different bars etc.
There’s only one way I can describe this scenario:
Let’s say you go to the mountains of Tibet or the jungles of Brazil and live with a tiny family for a week or so. You’ll notice extreme positivity from the family towards you.
However, one thing that you probably don’t think about it until you’ve done this many times is that they don’t treat their kids the same way.
Tibetan families send their second son to become a monk at the age of 2. The only reason you are treated with positivity and not made to conform is cause you’re outside their hierarchy.
The positivity/freedom/non-judgement they show you is because you’re an alien to them.
The freedom to be un judged comes along with not being a part of the community.
Over the past 8 years my parents started looking at me as an alien just like that.
I personally don’t have the patience to “bring people along”
I looked back and realized I’ve been to the gym 1000 times over the past 10 years. If people want to argue with me about the gym I won’t waste my time. But I always help when people are ready to just do the obvious.
So when I got married it was a “oh cool, that’s interesting congrats”
I don’t believe in reincarnation, so I could never hope to be reborn as someone who had “immigrant level 2” freedom, so my only hope was to make it happen with what I have.
So instead I did the next best thing, I trained my parents to be “immigrant level 2”.
Or more precisely, either they behave like Immigrant level 2 parents or I’ll end the interaction.
Read “block your mom” if you haven’t, but the simple idea is “The reason you get upset with your parents is that they’re treating you as someone you’re not anymore, and you let that happen”.
I put clear boundaries, in a sense you could say that I made my parents realize “behave like Immigrant level 2 parents or we can’t have a relationship”.
An example of this:
If you have parents that say shit like “if you do xyz your grandmother will kill herself/have a heart attack”
You call that out for abusive bullshit that it is, block your parents for months and say if they try that abusive bullshit again you’ll kick them out of your life.
At the start 8 years ago it might have been painful for them. But now, it’s a normal.
It’s not longer shock or anger it’s just a shrug.
This is kinda the biggest point I try and share with people. You have no idea how good things can be, and you can make them happen.
2 ideas which aren’t something I share are
“At least I’m not as bad as” this is often used when people are talking about health. But it’s similar with other things. I have friends who like me knew people that had to care about arranged marriage and they say you should be grateful for not being in that situation instead of just saying “yes it could be worse, but let’s make it better”.
Increments: Reddit and most advice on the internet work in terms of increments. It’s the “how to get my parents to be fine with my musician partner” advice. Tiny improvements. Personally I’ve found that it takes the same amount of time and effort to get massive step functions in terms of freedom.
“If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can't you do this in 6 months?”
Based on your circumstances your might even have to expand this out to lifetimes “If I could be reborn into more ‘privilege/freedom’ what would I like to do, you should ask: Why can’t I do that now?”
I’ve met a guy with a Palestine Passport traveling the world, if you really want something you can find a way (or at least, more of a way)
I think the only big idea I’ve had in the past 10 years is “anything you want, you can have”
And in most cases it’s about just doing the obvious thing.