I’m heading back to Guangzhou in a week to see my 93-year-old grandpa and uncle. I find myself struggling between enjoying life and feeling burdened by hardships. There’s a Chinese saying, 吃苦 (chī kǔ), which means to endure hardship and persevere without complaint. Growing up with this mindset has impacted me significantly.
My grandpa has a full-time caregiver, but she is unkind, and he refuses to let her go. My mother lived with them and frequently complained about the caregiver, saying she was worse than her and acted like she owned the place. Eventually, my uncle found her a hotel, but she chose to stay with my grandpa to save money. She often tells me, "Look at me, making money is not easy; you should save like I do." On the plane ride home, she complained for 15 hours about how miserable life was with the caregiver and how dirty the apartment was, vowing never to return. To this day, she makes me feel guilty for choosing to stay in a nicer hotel when I visit China.
My parents and grandparents are not happy at all. They have lost the ability to enjoy life, and it feels too late for them to relearn that skill. Enjoying life is crucial for living richly and abundantly. They grew up in an era that honored hardship and viewed spending money as wasteful. However, it's not too late for you to change. While a poverty mindset helped our parents and grandparents survive, it has also prevented them from embracing the good things in life.
My solution is to “let them be." We cannot change their mindset, so we must establish boundaries and maintain some distance. We can only change how we respond to their behavior and not allow them to make us feel guilty for enjoying life. It's hard to watch loved ones be so frugal that they suffer, and there’s often nothing we can do. Yet, it's important to unlearn this scarcity mindset to teach our children how to live happy and fulfilling lives, while also learning to set boundaries. May we all unlearn the idea that joy must be earned.
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