A Small-Town East Asian Boy: From All-Powerful Boss to Ordinary Person Who Cannot Do It All

I used to stockpile knowledge and skills for every kind of profession, role, and situation. This was the greed of omnipotent narcissism, the fear born of inferiority, and the self-objectification of a people-pleasing personality. Now that I accept that I cannot do it all, I feel much more at ease.

I. The East Asian Golden Boy’s Plan to Become an All-Powerful Boss

At its root is the way East Asian culture disciplines men. Men are the first sex, and the discipline imposed on them differs from that imposed on women. The ambitions are greater, and the participation more “voluntary.” From your childhood onward, your parents pour out their troubles: how hard their lives are, how pitiful they are, how incapable your siblings are. They tell you that the whole X family is counting on you, depending on you. You must rise from the bottom, hold your head high, stand above the crowd, bring everyone around you up with you, and bring glory to your ancestors.

They pile a crushing burden onto your tender shoulders because they know you lack love and long for it. How could they not know? They have watched you grow, naked and exposed, from a fertilized egg onward. Everything is part of the design.

From childhood, you become accustomed to conditional attention. Only by being good enough can you earn attention and seemingly be loved. So you get caught in the rat race of meritocracy. You are your family of origin’s golden child, blood bank, and scapegoat. Everyone says they need to rely on you, yet you are the only one with no one to rely on.

II. The East Asian All-Powerful Boss

East Asian culture demands that the “all-powerful boss, the patriarch” concern himself with everything: family affairs, national affairs, and world affairs:

1. Educator: educating yourself, your children, and your siblings’ children;
2. Politician: power struggles, the family’s power and wealth; military strategist;
3. Merchant, tycoon, entrepreneur: immense wealth, providing for everyone and taking care of everything; someone like Richard Liu.
4. Master of management: seeing through human nature, morality, and ethics, and managing businesses and the family;
5. Someone with connections on both sides of the law: navigating society’s complexities, unexpected events, unwritten rules, and violence;
6. Special forces soldier: every kind of street-fighting scenario; expert driving and off-road driving;

…Hence the popularity of Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Hu Xueyan, and Li Yunlong.

III. I Am Just an Ordinary Person

Once I deeply understood the limits of my abilities and energy, and understood my circumstances, I stopped getting entangled in other people’s problems. I stopped giving my attention to people who have the capacity to fend for themselves but insist on depending on me, or people who bring their troubles on themselves. I let others follow their own destinies. With unconditional confidence and ease, I no longer try to “Prove Myself Through Success, and Succeed Through Proving Myself,” and I no longer demand that I be all-knowing and all-powerful. I no longer accept people dumping their negativity on me or promise to solve their problems through my supposed omniscience and omnipotence.

Especially since I do not plan to have children, I do not need to prepare so many skills, resources, and connections for a child—as though I were preparing for a perfect dynasty, or trying to give myself the perfect childhood I never had. Nor do I intend to have a child and exploit his longing for love to pressure him into becoming an all-powerful boss who caters to me and takes care of me.

Fuck being an all-powerful boss. I’m just an ordinary person. Once I stop treating myself as the great East Asian patriarch, I can drop the paternalistic attitude and stop preaching.

IV. There Is Only One Task for the Rest of My Life: To Make My Way Through This Life and Bring It to a Close. At Ease and Free

The world is unreasonable everywhere, and I can no longer be bothered to reason with it.

We were once taught to become a mountain, bearing everything. Now I know I am water: without color or fixed form, unconditionally at ease, at one with nature. Instead of rigidly bracing myself to take every blow, I adapt fluidly, flowing with my heart and my fate.

I no longer act as though I must perpetuate life endlessly, passing down and protecting something extraordinary from generation to generation. The only things I need to protect are my own soul, happiness, and peace.

When all kinds of information appear in my feed, I no longer stop to read them. Nor do I rack my brains in advance over distant problems, complicated problems tucked away in society’s obscure corners, all the problems of children’s education and development, or problems other people have brought upon themselves.

Instead, I can let things take their course, be myself, love myself, play to my strengths and work around my weaknesses, and let every achievement come naturally.

At ease and free.