Should you stay at home and take care of your parents, or move out and live independently?

One of the hardest issues for Asians if deciding to leave home is who will take care of their parents. Here are three ideas on the issue.

First, you are not responsible for other people. You are not responsible for their lives nor their feelings. Nathaniel Branden says, “One of the most important of such moments is when the client grasps that no one coming. No one is coming to save me; no one is coming to is make life right for me; no one is corning to solve my problems. If I don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.” On the flip side, don’t go trying to save everyone. Have you tried to make people lose weight? It’s not possible. You can offer support, encouragement, and resources, but only they can save themselves.

One of the most helpful things you can do is become successful. Your success inspires in a visceral way. Oh this person who used to be a schmuck can be successful? I can do that too.

Second, life is about growth. It literally means to include the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

To me that means living for the future, and not for the past. It is sad that parents used to make babies to insure that someone will take care of them in old age. As for me, I subscribe to Derek Sivers’s philosophy on family:

I’m very attached to my kid, but I don’t expect him to be attached to me. […] He doesn’t owe me anything. His life is his own. He didn’t ask to be born, and has no debts.

Is the point of life to make babies so someone will take care of you when you are old? Because you had to do the same? There’s not much of a point in that…

Finally, choice — not hard work — is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Most people work hard. But most people don’t become successful. And what separates the people who “make it” from those who don’t are their choices. Your choices determine what you work hard on.

Should you stay at home and take care of your parents, or move out and live independently? Most people never make this choice. This is, of course, inaccurate. Not choosing means choosing the default, which in this case is to not move out.

Should you stay at home and take care of your parents, or move out and live independently? There is no right answer. Only a choice for you to make.