Autonomy
Sometimes I think I was very hard on my parents. Their decision to send me to IIT JEE prep in a weird place and not let me study humanities used to hurt me so badly. But as I grew old, I realized it wasn’t their decision.
It was my own. Accusations are wrong.
As guilt settled in, I wanted to be grateful. I wanted to make a list of everything that my parents gave me. One gift stood out.
Autonomy.
I was never told what to read and what to study. I read random ass books, watched horror films, and talked about history all day long, and not once did my parents intervene. They let me be and let me make my own mistakes. As a child, I had autonomy. Now as a 28-year-old, I am grateful.
I chose out of my volition that the only way to make my parents proud was to crack a Tier 1 college. I was rarely compared with other kids and I was given the discipline to sit and work your ass off once you decide what you want. Chose my undergrad. Left my undergrad field. I went on to sell stuff.
Prepared for CAT. Fucked it up. Went to the best place I could get. In all this ordeal, I had autonomy. To choose what to study, where to study, and what to do. They might have not liked a lot of my decisions but not once they told me what to do.
Again, I had autonomy.
So, when we talk about privilege, what tops is not the money my father sent or the support my mother showed when I came back home a broken man. It was the autonomy. To let me be the weird kid who goes on to write and talk about topics that he loves.
Both of my grandfathers weren’t the ideal type. I know they took away a lot of autonomy from my parents. But I see how they are paying it back to the next generation despite not having it.
And that’s what I aim for. To give autonomy to my kids. I might not earn as high as some of their friend’s parents. But I will let them be. Because my parents let me be.