Thankful to my parents

If there's one thing i am sincerely thankful of to my parents, it is that they had moved our whole family to New Zealand. I am not talking about the most obvious reasons like the fact that i can learn fluent english or that we can live this very comfortable (actually perhaps too comfortable) lifestyle. I am thankful about that too, that's for sure. But mostly, i am thankful to them because it is through moving to New Zealand that i could gain some kind of mental freedom that i do not think i would have gotten, or been exposed to, or had been insightful enough to figure out- if i had been raised in Hong Kong.

I have a friend who is in a real dilema, she has a boyfriend overseas and she is not getting younger (though she is still very young) and she is planning to go overseas to where her boyfriend lives, and marry him. This all sounds really good and a great plan really, however the only problem is, even though she does want to do this indeed because she does really love him, somewhere in the back of her mind-she wishes for another life, one entirely different. Where she does not even have a steady boyfriend who is a husband to be, and she does not have to move to another country to live forever- but instead she can be free to go out with any guy she wants for as long as she wants, and she can travel and work whenever and however she desires. Bascially, she'd be cut free from any strings attached, and she would be her own person making her own decisions and creating her own freedom.

So, in actual fact, what's stopping her? It is her upbringing, her entire family, her culture, the way she was brought up to think, everything that is her life and what she had been raised to value and believe. It is expected of her and she has so much to uphold. Those are the strings attached, tied since before she was born, and it would take a load of guts to untie them with your own bare hands. She is also essentially raised in New Zealand, and she saw the New Zealander's more free minded way of life, the lack of commitment, the independence you can have (and not be afraid to have it) and the feeling that you are NOT restricted by time; namely age. She sees this too, and she can fantasize about it but she dares not go for it, because it defys everything that had been taught to her by her family and her tradition.

This is why i am so lucky, my parents are very open minded, they understand change is impossible to avoid if you move to different country with different ways of thinking. I had become some kind of 'kiwi' kind of girl early on ....well actually not really i think..., but anywho,- even that wasn't enough to free my way of thinking, it was through actually going out, and having a long almost four year relationship with a New Zealand born and raised guy that i saw how this other kind of life could be possible. He lived in a flat alone and at twenty seven didn't even think about marriage, or worry about buying a house or 'career' prospects, and then at 28, 29, 30. It was fine for him and i respected that, infact almost admired that. To me, it seemed such a unique way of life and i wished i could do it. Get rid of the mental clockwork of age in my head and just do all the things i want without setting a clock so i have to do it all before 30 in order to be settled and married. Now i think, who cares, i'll start only considering about marriage when i hit 30 and just not worry myself with time. See i still am not totally free from it as i have only delayed it - but i do think it is a huge improvement to how i had thought.

Times are changing, and life is not about the things you get done and in what time you do them in, nor is it about getting to this one point where you are supposed to get to by a certain age, it's now more about all the freedom you have and what you choose to make out of it, and how you can and do - control it. I am thankful my parents brought me here, because i saw this other society construct, this expectation- unravel, loose its importance, because it is through seeing a different culture (ie of New Zealand) that i can be someone with their point of view also. So i can be outside looking in, to the rules of tradition that is from Hong Kong. If a typical kiwi New Zealander can be 30 years old and still be in a flat, free of commitments, with a happy job and still enjoying life, then why can't everyone else living on the same land do that too? They only have to be convinced of it to be able to do it, and i think through all these years of this other different culture, that i am convinced.