4 Comments
Apr 26, 2022Liked by Shivani

I love reading you. I went in today to discover your distinctive and insightful point of view on a topic, always having something to take away to apply to my own life. But today...I found myself reading this work through a parent's eye. Recently I realized that when I tell my children I am proud of them, it's not for what I've done to "make" them who they are. In other words, what they possess in themselves, what they have learned and applied to be the individual I and others see is uniquely their own. These are often traits I admire and have missed in myself. The adage that one arrives "by standing on the shoulders of those that came before them" applies here, too. You recognize the legacy, the story is in you. What a gift, speaking from a parent's perspective ;). Bless you heart, Shivani.

Mrs. N.

Expand full comment

I too lived in that tiny apartment in India. The opportunity to contemplate, conceptualize and write this is progress enough. Purpose is progress. Don't overthink it.

Expand full comment

I really like this piece. It seems to me that a paradox is at work: our ancestors came here to give us a better life, but their "better life" concept is often measured in terms of security. Do you know Scott Barry Kaufman's sailboat metaphor (https://scottbarrykaufman.com/sailboat-metaphor/)? It seems that the "better life" concept of our ancestors is all about security -- the base of the boat. We first-generation overachievers get the security (thanks, in large part, to the hard work of our ancestors), but security proves to be "not enough" -- we want to climb higher on Maslow's hierarchy and get to play, wonder, purpose, love.

My friend once told me a story that nailed this point home. He volunteers for a group that's working to end solitary confinement. There was a student who was part of the group who was a Yale law student, first gen American with parents from Africa. She had to decide: do I spend my summer interning for this group, or for a corporate law office?

The first path would lead to more purpose, less money (vice versa for the second).

My friend, an American with significant financial and social capital (much of thanks to his family being here for many generations), thought the decision was a no-brainer: go with the first option.

As an immigrant myself, I totally understood the law student's struggle. We immigrants and first-geners are psychologically straddling the realms of deficiency and growth.

We CAN make the first choice: take sabbaticals, make less money intentionally, take the idealistic internship, however doing so requires working against the deficiency conditioning that kept our families working hard to give us a better life.

Which comes back to your point about gratitude and guilt. I am grateful for the conditioning that gave me greater opportunities here in America than I would have had if my parents had stayed in Moldova. And, there can be guilt for stepping away from this conditioning too (for me this often comes up in the realms of "waste" -- wasting food or money).

Expand full comment