{"id":3850,"date":"2016-07-24T07:27:46","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T01:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3850"},"modified":"2016-07-24T07:27:46","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T01:57:46","slug":"why-we-dont-want-to-be-our-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3850","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Inherit the Worst Traits of Our Parents?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span><\/p>hen I was growing up, I was a lot like Christine in Greta Gerwig\u2019s <\/span>Ladybird<\/span><\/i>. I wanted to get out of my dead-end hometown with the urgency of someone who was living life on the clock. I\u2019d harbour and nurture strange, fanciful aspirations without bothering to reflect on whether I was equipped to realise any of them. And I was ambivalent about who I really wanted to be, conveniently masking my needless rebellion as an attempt to truly find myself. But just like Ladybird, I was unwavering about one thing: I wanted to grow up to be nothing like my <\/span>parents<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\n\nAt <\/span>family gatherings<\/span><\/a> when relatives would pinpoint that I was as introverted as my father or deduce that I must have gotten my obsession with clothes from my mother, I\u2019d laugh it off. Instead, I\u2019d focus on the differences: My mother\u2019s aversion to reading compared to my packed bookshelf. Her melodious voice as compared to my tone-deafness. My father\u2019s love for <\/span>fish<\/span><\/a> and my tepidness towards it. Or his inability to stay awake beyond 10 pm. I\u2019d use these discrepancies to corroborate that my personality \u2013 and by extension, my identity \u2013 was distinct from that of my parents. That any genetic rite of passage couldn\u2019t mould my inherent reflexes. And that any trait overlap was merely incidental.<\/span>\n\nNow that I look back, it seems like a trifling thing for a teenager to be consumed by. But back then, it dictated how I viewed myself. I suppose, most of us spend so many of our waking hours trying to fit in and simultaneously stand out, that we deem it necessary to be in absolute control of our distinctive <\/span>identities<\/span><\/a>. And we naively assume that the only way to win this inexplicable race to be our own person is if we divorce ourselves from the personalities of our parents. I sure did.<\/span>\n

Today, there\u2019s another thing I\u2019m sure about: Even when I become the person my parents could never be, I\u2019ll still end up preserving a bit of them.<\/blockquote>\nSo when my eyes showed the first signs of trouble that ended in a trip at the neighbourhood ophthalmologist at the age of 10, I was just bothered by my imperfect vision. Even though, just like <\/span>my father<\/span><\/a>, I couldn\u2019t read a book that was in front of me without squinting my eyes or make out any word scribbled at a distance. And exactly like him, even my vision declined to warm up to the convenience of contact lenses in the ensuing years; ensuring that I\u2019d count out my life in lost spectacles. <\/span>\n\nI don\u2019t remember a time when my father didn\u2019t wear glasses. Or a single moment when his utter dependence on reading glasses didn\u2019t irk me. I was perpetually annoyed by him for abruptly cutting innumerable <\/span>family outings<\/span><\/a> short by misplacing his glasses and sending the rest of us into a frenzy. I was never fond of the chronic visits to the opticians whenever he\u2019d lose yet another pair. And I\u2019d promptly read his perennial reluctance to switch to lenses as a mark of stubbornness.<\/span>\n\nAnd yet, over time, these very traits that I disliked about him slowly became my own: My imperfect vision dominates every aspect of my existence; I\u2019ve been to more opticians than on dates; and I\u2019ve ended up losing three pairs of glasses in a span of one month. <\/span>\n\nIn an episode of <\/span>Modern Family<\/span><\/i>, Claire, a multitasker mom who makes a habit of going to any lengths to prove that she is right, realises that her annoying trademark trait was after all a hand-me-down from her own father. The realisation of unoriginality confounds her. But what engulfs her more is that feeling of belonging that only a parent\u2019s shadow can offer.<\/span>\n\nWhat we inherit from our parents is rarely ever tangible. Unlike what we assume, it\u2019s not always things that we can hold on to; or things that serve as <\/span>reminders<\/span><\/a> of the life they painstakingly built. Like the home my parents bought after years of renting a modest government quarters or the money \u2013 scattered in bank accounts, fixed deposits, investments, and insurances \u2013 that is a testament to the three decades of my father\u2019s professional perseverance. What our parents pass down to us, always runs deeper and it\u2019s not always the things we admire about them. In my case, it\u2019s every trait of theirs that I didn\u2019t make an effort to understand or tolerate.<\/span>\n\nLike Claire, I have my own collection of hand-me-downs: I have inherited <\/span>my mother<\/span><\/a>\u2019s temper, my father\u2019s carelessness. I overreact like her. And shut down like him. My mother\u2019s lent me her infuriating trait of always wanting to have the last word and my father\u2019s tried to balance it out by letting me have some of his laziness. On any other day, I\u2019d be horrified about these flaws \u2013 of turning into my mother or becoming my father\u2019s daughter. <\/span>\n\nIn fact, I\u2019ve spent a large part of my life criticising and fighting these very traits that I now wear on my sleeve. But ever since <\/span>I\u2019ve moved out<\/span><\/a> and plunged into a life that I had to build from scratch, I realised asserting my independence didn\u2019t have to come at the cost of alienating my parents. As I grow older, I don\u2019t view these inadequacies as a liability \u2013 something that needs to be changed or overcome. In me or them. Instead I now see these shared flaws as the bridge that connects me to my parents. That makes me understand them and be kinder to the lives they led. And isn\u2019t that what an inheritance is supposed to do anyway?<\/span>\n\nToday, there\u2019s another thing I\u2019m sure about: Even when I become the person my parents are not, I\u2019ll still end up preserving a bit of them.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up, I wanted to be nothing like my parents. I spent a significant part of my teenage years defining myself in opposition to my parents. Yet, over time, the very traits that I disliked about them slowly became my own \u2013 and that\u2019s when I truly understood them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":3851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[4896,1441,1225,7187,443,4814,7188,1912,1840,1772,1726,7189],"class_list":["post-3850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-aspirations","tag-bengali","tag-childhood","tag-claire","tag-father","tag-growing-up","tag-household","tag-millennial","tag-modern-family","tag-mother","tag-parents","tag-traits"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Do We Inherit the Worst Traits of Our Parents?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Growing up, I wanted to be nothing like my parents. I spent a significant part of my teenage years defining myself in opposition to my parents. 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