Only If Those Opportunities Can be Transferred...
In Chinese, there is a proverb that says "望子成龍，望女成鳳" (watching the son become dragon, watching the daughter become phoenix). It denotes the urgency and the joy parents get from expecting and seeing their children become successful in life. Throughout history, parents have made endless financial and physical investments to help their children the necessary connections and education, so that the children can live better lives than the parents are ever able to during their lives.
The case is especially true for immigrant parents who has in many cases, lost out on the same opportunities they would have had in their native countries largely due to their inability to fit in the societies in which they immigrated. But parents are not the only ones who constantly expect their children to succeed beyond anything they can imagine. The friends and other relatives also seem to put in at least certain emotional investment in the progress of the elite few in their social circles.
And occasionally, the expectations reach an almost paranoid scale. Lavishing attention and money on the person with the potential is one thing, but exerting constant mental pressure with incessant preaching to the person of the potential success he or she can achieve cannot possibly be a positive force in the person's mental development. Especially for distant friends, partaking so much interest in the future of someone not even that particularly familiar is often highly puzzling and distressful for the person on the receiving end.
In fact, when those relatives and friends speaks of expectations for others, they speak as if they themselves are the ones with the potential to succeed. They never hesitate to paint a bright picture of someones else with their own definition of "success," even picking the profession and workplace of the others according to what they think are the best. They only superficially consult with the person in question regarding his or her future, only enough to keep painting their own pictures with more details.
These friends and relatives, in essence, are dreaming their own dreams. Their backgrounds, whether it be financial, familial, or linguistic, do not allow them to pursue their own ideal dreams without reservations. So indirectly they are relegating the tasks of living their own "perfect lives" to those they known have the potential to get there. By preaching the "correct" life directions to someone else, they are just reflecting, vainly, the success and professional/social status they themselves will never be able to achieve.
So, the one who is targeted as the "potential big-shot" has to carry on life not only with his or her own dreams and hopes, but also those of myriad others who are looking on his or her advancements. These onlookers will keep on seeing their "better selves" in the success of others, and will relentlessly redirect the successful toward a life path they themselves hoped to have pursued if it had not been for the existence of many social or financial obstacles. To fulfill the dreams of all these people, the targeted person has to try several times as hard.
Yet, the extra pressure on the person walking down a path of success is perhaps the lesser part of the story. Beyond the progress of one person lies hundreds of illusions in the minds of the others. These illusions will stay as illusions precisely because of continued existence of social inequality, the uneven distribution of opportunities that force many to simply think of their own dreams as something that can only be seen as hollow dreams.
Because society cannot guarantee that every single one of her constituents can have a shot at pursuing his or her own dream, that some of these people can only dream emptily of what they could have been if they had the chance. Their imagination take on the persona of another people who were luckily given by society the opportunity to succeed. Only if true equality of opportunities do exist then can people stop dreaming and start acting for themselves to pursue their own life goals.
The case is especially true for immigrant parents who has in many cases, lost out on the same opportunities they would have had in their native countries largely due to their inability to fit in the societies in which they immigrated. But parents are not the only ones who constantly expect their children to succeed beyond anything they can imagine. The friends and other relatives also seem to put in at least certain emotional investment in the progress of the elite few in their social circles.
And occasionally, the expectations reach an almost paranoid scale. Lavishing attention and money on the person with the potential is one thing, but exerting constant mental pressure with incessant preaching to the person of the potential success he or she can achieve cannot possibly be a positive force in the person's mental development. Especially for distant friends, partaking so much interest in the future of someone not even that particularly familiar is often highly puzzling and distressful for the person on the receiving end.
In fact, when those relatives and friends speaks of expectations for others, they speak as if they themselves are the ones with the potential to succeed. They never hesitate to paint a bright picture of someones else with their own definition of "success," even picking the profession and workplace of the others according to what they think are the best. They only superficially consult with the person in question regarding his or her future, only enough to keep painting their own pictures with more details.
These friends and relatives, in essence, are dreaming their own dreams. Their backgrounds, whether it be financial, familial, or linguistic, do not allow them to pursue their own ideal dreams without reservations. So indirectly they are relegating the tasks of living their own "perfect lives" to those they known have the potential to get there. By preaching the "correct" life directions to someone else, they are just reflecting, vainly, the success and professional/social status they themselves will never be able to achieve.
So, the one who is targeted as the "potential big-shot" has to carry on life not only with his or her own dreams and hopes, but also those of myriad others who are looking on his or her advancements. These onlookers will keep on seeing their "better selves" in the success of others, and will relentlessly redirect the successful toward a life path they themselves hoped to have pursued if it had not been for the existence of many social or financial obstacles. To fulfill the dreams of all these people, the targeted person has to try several times as hard.
Yet, the extra pressure on the person walking down a path of success is perhaps the lesser part of the story. Beyond the progress of one person lies hundreds of illusions in the minds of the others. These illusions will stay as illusions precisely because of continued existence of social inequality, the uneven distribution of opportunities that force many to simply think of their own dreams as something that can only be seen as hollow dreams.
Because society cannot guarantee that every single one of her constituents can have a shot at pursuing his or her own dream, that some of these people can only dream emptily of what they could have been if they had the chance. Their imagination take on the persona of another people who were luckily given by society the opportunity to succeed. Only if true equality of opportunities do exist then can people stop dreaming and start acting for themselves to pursue their own life goals.
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