This quote from Squid Game 3 rings in my ears and has stuck with me even though it’s been weeks since I watched it:
“No matter how you look at it, life is just unfair. Bad people do bad things, but they blame others and go on to live in peace. Good people, on the other hand, beat themselves up about the smallest things.”
And that’s because there is some truth in it that I see often in my own life. I am very hard on myself sometimes. This happened multiple times recently. For example, I had a planned trip to visit my dad and two sisters for a two week China trip in September. But all of a sudden, I just got this amazing opportunity I could not pass up to be a professional interviewer for a swimwear brand in California during the same time. That meant I would have to cut the trip short and leave a few days earlier.
I felt bad about it. I felt guilty that I was missing family bonding time, like an absentee father (even though I’m not a dad but a brother and son in this case). For whatever reason, I have plenty of availability throughout the year, but these opportunities always come during dates on top of previous engagements, and I had to cut my family time with my family short in NYC earlier this year for a similar reason.
Yet, get this: my sister had nonchalantly announced a week before that she could only stay 8 days because of limited vacation time, and no one was upset. The family was also not upset and understood when I had to leave early in NYC. And my dad went off to pursue starting a business in China 15 years ago, and since then, he only visits the family for 2 to 4 days per year during Christmas, and he’s missed most of my sisters’ childhoods, and he holds zero guilt and doesn’t feel bad as this was his dream, but my sisters aren’t upset or traumatized about it. He works really hard to this day and is pursing his dream (and recently published a book).
It seems like all the American culture and programming I’ve experienced about “being a good parent who is there for their kid”, “one doesn’t regret working harder on their deathbed” and “quality time is most important” is just not always true, but I’ve let it influence me so much that I feel worse than I should.
Anyhow, that was my journal dump for the day. I realize now that no one is going to be upset about this, and it’s okay. Be kinder to myself as I tend to be the hardest on myself. Back to that squid game quote, I think caring, kind people do care about others, but when taken too far, they beat themselves up too much and lose all internal peace. Whereas, the “villains” tend to not even care about others, and live in peace. I don’t think the answer is to become an evil psychopath, but to be kinder to yourself and realize it’s going to be okay even if it’s not perfect.
Wish me luck, because now, I have to prep for a really long flight back from China to the USA that I would’ve been able to break up into shorter more bearable flights if this opportunity didn’t come up haha.
