South Asian don't have life skills once the career checklist is done

[SplashJuice]

It's because our parents raised us in a way that's survival first over development, you're always on the edge and trying to make it. When you finally make it you don't know what to do because the mindset, micro-actions and culture from the start was to "survive" not to "thrive", it's like a structural failure because nothing you built is for thriving only for surviving. Can't blame them, they came from their poverty ridden shitholes and used their mindset in the wealthier world which works for building a baseline security but nothing beyond that.

 

[SplashJuice]

This kind of culture is a knee-jerk response to the kind of environment our parents grew up in.

They saw neighbours starve, relatives lose everything in Partition or the '71 war or the '91 liberalisation chaos, jobs disappear overnight, families go from middle class to homeless because one breadwinner got sick with no safety net. . A BMW or a doctor son or an NRI kid sending dollars home literally meant your family wouldn't be wiped out the next time the country sneezed. Survival PTSD got dressed up as "culture" and handed down.

South Asians have too much emotional attachment to status, probably because of the caste system and foreign rulers, which makes them want to chase security so desperately but it's actually a comfortable prison that prevents them from taking big risks in life.

 

[idealistsynth]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I feel like a lot of South Asian men silently go through the same thing:

We were raised to chase grades to college to job.

That was the entire blueprint.

I've lived through it grinded for years and landed myself in a comfy place but after that I had no idea what to do and had to teach myself a lot of things from scratch. Growing up my parents did everything for me, for cooking, cleaning, laundry evrything just so I could focus on my studies which was great but I skipped on many crucial stepping stones growing up into an adult.

I know many South Asians and East Asians that crush the career checklist by their mid-late 20s IIT/IIM/Stanford. FAANG level job, 7-figure salary, proud parents posting on WhatsApp groups and then nothing. The script just ends. We were never taught what comes after ""You've made it''.


No one showed us how to build a body, how to talk to women without sounding like a resume or how to spend a Sunday that isn't recovery from Excel sheets. The result is Quiet depression in expensive apartments,doom scrolling at 2 AM, wondering why the "success" feels like a trap. I know so many people like this. Senior Devs, Consultants and people working in top firms living the LinkedIn success story but still sad from the inside.

Our parents fought a different war. Their priority was survival and job security. For them, getting a stable job was the dream. Because that was the reality of it and how the conditions were

But for us. We were raised in better conditions, with more opportunities so our needs are different. We crave purpose, relationships, confidence, mental well being, independence, self expression. All completely foreign concepts to curry parents

yeah tbh most of my cousins and other Indians I’ve noticed around campus are so socially unintelligent and unaware. they also have 0 things to do other than academics/work.

south asian parents and ppl don’t understand those hobbies provide quality of life and also honestly help in career. playing sports since being a kid gives you enough ball knowledge to steer conversations with all of the other races, which is my fav way to start talking to someone (especially a younger man). shi wild though they don’t be working out or nun. makes the comp for brown girls absurdly easy, not that it wasn’t in the first place