I heard the word failure again this weekend and this time it was coming from my sister’s mouth. She has spent the last few weeks as a work horse for her consulting company in order to finish yet another project that makes someone else rich. Amazing how that happens. When I told her that maybe she could get out of her job and pursue another avenue, her instinctive answer was “but I will be a failure if I quite this consulting job”. Isn’t this what life is after all? One big compromise of your life after another to climb up the proverbial ladder?
At this point my sister may be doing a great job but at what cost? Her health, personal life, and general happiness has completely taken a backseat to the demands of her job. When will it be enough?
So she thinks she is a failure. Interesting. Here is a woman with an engineering degree from Stanford and two Olympic teams under her belt. Let’s not mention the various accolades she has acquired along the way for being a superior human being. She is the only woman to ever win the national collegiate title for two different weapons in two years. Unfortunately we are only as good as our last win.
I began to think about what would make her come to those types of conclusions because maybe helping her work through this mess could also help me to understand some of the reasons why I feel the way I feel about my own achievements? Here I am, training for the Olympics and I decide I am a failure if I don’t reach the number one spot after three months of training. This is very fatalistic and destructive thought.
The first answer I thought was, our culture is all about the number one spot. In this instance of “our culture” I am talking about the mixed cultural background that Felicia and I grew up in. My mother had a huge influence on us and we were always being pushed to the limits to be the best in everything we did. This worked really well when we were young because there are all sorts of Chinese school debates, piano recitals, and fencing competitions to compete in. What happens when you get older when the stakes are higher and not everyone receives a blue ribbon in the end? How do you deal with that? And some people wonder why Asian countries have high rates of suicide. It’s not just the small apartments folks.
I once told my mother that I wanted to be a physical therapist because I wanted a way to help others with the knowledge I gained through my own experiences. My vision was to build a high performance center for elite athletes that worked in conjunction with a university to faciliate testing and research. I didn’t even get so far as to explain all this because as soon as I said that I wanted to be a physical therapist she burst out in a hysterical fit of crying and yelling. What my mom wanted and still wants to this day is for me go to law school or business school because that was something she understood as prestigious. Not to mention the fact that she gets bragging rights that ,“Iris go to Columbia law school, she going to be lawyer.” What my Mom doesn’t know is the amount of debt I would be in when I came out of school that would force me to sell my soul to a law firm for several years just to be able break even. Apologies to the lawyers out there but I did interview for a paralegal position in NYC once and one of the lawyer told me to run the other direction. This isn’t to say that I am not still considering going to law school.
In contrast is the tough, know it all, confident, American spirit that stresses that anything is possible. Let’s think of American success stories, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates, yes they all have one thing in common (lots o’ cash) but the thing that links them all together is that they took calculated risks in things that they really enjoyed and success was an afterthought. Can one argue that they were successful to begin with when they decided to take their own path? It takes guts to walk off the treadmill of the corporate rat race to pursue your own ingenuity but that where the soul of the American lives.
Not only do I want this message to reach my sister but I also want this message to reach the children of immigrants that often feel torn between the desires of their parents and their own passions influenced by American culture. In the end I think the reconciliation between the two cultures is in finding peace within yourself in order to determine your own definition of success because at the end of the day you are responsible for your own happiness.
My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.
--Elaine Maxwell
