Love over gold

As one who spent way too much time in educational institutions and tends to be quite rational in his approach to life I am occasionally overwhelmed with unexpected emotionally charged situations concerning other people. I hope I am not really a proverbial geek but sometimes I miscalculate consequences of my decisions based more on abstract ideas than real world complexity. I grew up bookish and I am inclined to think that my early adulthood spent mostly with computers during rather cruel times outside did not help either.

I guess this rambling intro is a lame attempt to disguise the extent to which I am embarrassed with my complete fiasco to foresee the impact of my relocation on my parents. They have dedicated most of their lives to me. Surely enough they were a particularly poignant couple of empty nesters when I got married and moved out. Ever since then I have been slightly uncomfortable with the idea of hurting them. I perfectly understand that this is the way life goes ahead. And I am pretty well-versed in psychology to recognize common life phases and stuff. Nevertheless, I admit I have not managed to completely reconcile myself with their suffering and I feel pretty bad about this whole story.

I believe this is the way real adulthood comes. I think most of us carry some sort of frozen memories in which our parents are young, healthy and as carefree as child perception sees them. Personally, I never feel myself truly adult when I am with my parents regardless of what my mind tells me. This illusion of timeless blissfulness hides the simple fact that the more we progress through life, the less our parents have ahead of them. We enter the most productive decades of our careers, we start earning serious money, we become confident in our ability to succeed and yearn for challenges. At the same time, our parents lose their employability, become less healthy and sustain all other debilitating corollaries of the second half of their lives. I am sure we are almost surprised one day to recognize how fragile our parents became.

To my utmost surprise I have lost most of the joy of going to the US recently. I still believe this is a good idea, I can easily recite numerous advantages but every time I meet my parents nowadays I feel like weeping. Literally. I cannot believe how painful it is and I do not see an easy way out. I have been talking about immigration for so long that it became an in-joke among my colleagues. My parents got used to hearing about it as well so this year was almost a surprise for all of them.

I did not see it coming. It is totally different from the way I expected it would be. I am not nervous anymore about competition with Asians at work, career progress, GC process, IRAs, the cost of life in NYC and many other things I used to be concerned with. All those questions seem to be just business as usual. But I am definitely lost about untangling this quagmire with parents.

If we were talking about going to work for a few years and getting back later this situation would be quite easily manageable. Unfortunately, I have been (used to?) absolutely committed to immigration and long-term perspectives of life in the US. Right now I am not so sure and it drives me crazy.

Probably, this is an important lesson. If you are close to your parents (or they are to you) you are in for some dramatic experience. And it looks like for the first time I cannot provide any positive suggestions – other people’s lives seem to be hardly amenable to positive reframing and self-improvement. Nothing is for free but there seem to be prices which your karma may not sustain.