I’ll hit the key points.
Call my mom just to chat, eventually we get to talking about how I’m broke and I’m personally okay with that. She goes on with basic phrases “you need to take the tools I gave you to be successful” I replied, “okay but you have those tools too, why is it you don’t have a retirement set up and are still broke, I’m just being realistic, I’ll probably be check to check for the rest of my life and I accept that.”
She did not like that. After expressing that I would’ve probably been better off not doing the student loans that she and I were both told to do, she starts going off saying things like “you wouldn’t be happy doing the thing you’re doing” and to me that’s a bad point. That’s like saying “I love my kid I wouldn’t change it for the world, BUT if I could do it again I would spend a few years in New York”, it’s okay to feel either way, but be honest with yourself.
Finally, after a few minutes of circling, I’m very calm asking her to not get mad, and she is irate at this point. And here’s the thing that broke her brain and made her hang up on me. She says “you just have to find the thing that makes you happy.” I reply, “yeah but that thing is spending time with my wife.” She replies “well you weren’t born rich and it is what it is” and I replied “I know and I’m totally okay with that”. She was speechless for about 5 seconds. We were both arguing the same point, but her conditioning kicked in and didn’t know how to reply to the existentialism of being stuck in our system. Thanks for listening, additional thoughts?
Also, I guess my general advice would be, when your arguing about this stuff, lean into it.
Also, also, something funny. At one point she does the bootstrap thing in defense of why she’s not successful. “You have to work harder if you want more rewards, I’ve just been lazy and depressed” but my mom has this weird notion that ‘work’ is education. And while it is hard, that’s not how that works. “So what should I do to do that”, I said with the fairest intentions. Silence.