There is a particular kind of silence that happens at the dinner table when you tell your parents what you actually want to do.
Not shouting. Shouting would be easier. Just a pause, and then a question that sounds reasonable but is not really a question. Beta, and after that? What will happen after that?
I think a lot of us know that pause........
There is a thing I want to do with my life. My parents do not want me to do it.
That sentence is not dramatic. We must have asked ourselves or the internet this question many times, and the answer we received—whether from the internet or our own inner selves—was that it is our life, and we should do whatever makes us happy. They will understand. It’s easy to say, but when you have to live with them and get the silent treatment in return, your mind starts racing in all sorts of directions.
Sometimes we feel they ought to understand—after all, we aren't little kids anymore. For a while, they might even seem like enemies. Yet, deep down, we all know that no one wishes us well more than they do.
Yes, everyone knows they aren't the villains. And that is whole problem. If they were being cruel or selfish I could just decide they were wrong and move on. Instead they are worried. They have seen things I have not seen. They know people whose lives got hard in ways I cannot imagine at my age, and every time they look at my plan, they see risk where I see possibility.
They are not saying no to my happiness. They are saying no to my suffering. Those look identical from the outside and they are completely different things
The part nobody warns you about
I used to think that convincing them was the hard part. But that isn't the case. The real challenge is that even if you win, move forward, or actually achieve what you set out to do, you still carry something with you—a small, ever-present burden. Just as we are enjoying the very thing we struggled for—the thing we fought our families over—a strange restlessness begins to creep in: "Did I do the right thing? Have they been hurt because of me?"
You can win the argument and still not feel free.
It isn't as if giving up the things we love—just to maintain peace at home—automatically makes us happy simply because we see others happy.
No; while we may find a sense of peace knowing our family is content, the restlessness within us remains unchanged. We simply choose silence over speaking up.
There is a price to be paid for this aspect of the story, too; it happens gradually, often without the people around us even realizing it.That is why no path is easy; everything comes at a cost.
To this day, I haven't found a way out of this situation. If we think about our own happiness, we still feel guilty somewhere if someone suffers because of us; and if we think about them...
I do not have an answer. I still do the thing they do not approve of, and I still feel bad about it, and both of those things are true at the same time.
Most of us face this at some point. So tell me honestly, what did you do?
If this hit close to home, drop a comment. I would like to know I am not the only one carrying this.
Disclaimer: All images featured in this blog were generated using AI. Translations were assisted by Google Translate.
