Ten years ago, my parents made the decision to move from Iran to the U.S. so that my brother and I could have access to better education and opportunities. While immigration to the U.S. on the basis of access to opportunity is a prosaic idea, thoroughly explored and romanticized by literature and various forms of art, I still find myself thinking about this decision at times, with nothing short of bewilderment.
My parents had extremely comfortable lives back home; they were fairly well off financially, had challenging and engaging occupations, understood how the world works, and most importantly, had a wealth of friends and family around. Yet, they gave all of this up, and migrated to a land far far away so that their offsprings could have the potential to live better lives. They now routinely go years without seeing their family and friends, have lost touch with the politics and the everyday happenings in the land they once called home, have somewhat limited abilities to navigate their surroundings because of language and cultural barriers, have had to hold extremely degrading lines of work and many many more just to increase the likelihood that their sons live more fulfilled lives.
While both my parents have made numerous sacrifices throughout the years, I view perhaps the most profound one as one concerning their relationship with my brother and me. People have different reasons for having kids; but one common denominator, shared by many parents, is the process itself: guiding, nurturing and raising others with whom you have a deep, personal connection; watching those for whom you have an unconditional love grow in all sorts of unexpected (and sometimes unwanted) ways. This is the joy (and pain) of parenthood; and this is something (perhaps not known a priori) they had to sacrifice in making this move.
By raising their children in a new, foreign environment, they took on the risk of their children evolving fundamentally differently than they did, facing different problems, having different experiences and developing radically different world views on some of the basic tenets of life. They took on the risk of their children having hobbies, friends, interests and occupations with which they were unfamiliar. They took on the risk of not knowing how to help their children even if they wanted to. They took on the risk of imposing a strict upper-bound on the level of proximity they could enjoy with friends and significant others of their sons. They took on the risk of succeeding in their original mission (to provide a better life for their sons) at the cost of being unable to do much in many aspects that life but watch from the sidelines, regardless of their desire to participate and help.
It’s far too easy to sit back and assert that they could have put in the effort to become more in-tune with the culture of their new home, master the language and break cultural barriers, etc. In fact, it’s been hammered into my head that if I want something, I simply have to search to find the optimal path to it and then work to attain it. But for two fifty-some year old immigrants, lost in a new world, with loads of uncertainty and responsibility on their shoulders, I don’t think the same ideology comes naturally.
Therefore, whether there were routes that they did not explore is not an interesting line of reasoning to me. What is of interest is “how?”
How could these two individuals sacrifice virtually the rest of their lives to afford their children access to better opportunities, with the hope that they will adequately utilize them? How could they give up every nicety they’d worked their entire lives for (family, friends, status, money, occupation, house, belongings, etc.) and embark on a journey riddled with risks, with nothing but a glimmer of hope of an upside, whose rewards did not even belong to themselves? Is this what “love” looks like? Am I a bad person if I cannot picture myself doing anything remotely as selfless as this for anyone on the face of the planet? Will I be able to relate to this if and when I have offsprings of my own? Or perhaps this type of sacrifice is a thing of the past as members of our species become more enamored with the idea of “living life to the fullest” for themselves?
Maybe one needs to have a certain degree of irrationality in order to engage in such behaviors, and it cannot be easily reasoned about. Maybe love presented herself as a shift in the risk profiles of two fairly risk-averse individuals, to compel them to take on an endeavour that was surely net-negative for themselves, but had a potential net-positive outcome for those about whom they care deeply.
Either way, I cannot understand this phenomenon. I am thankful, confused and upset that I have greatly reaped the benefits of an undertaking that I cannot understand nor expect myself (at present) to ever carry out for someone else.
At the end, both my brother and I did end up in professional settings that would have been unattainable had my parents not made this irrational bet. So I suppose this episode of heroism also ends well: the sacrifices paid off, credits roll, and everyone goes home uplifted and inspired. Everyone, except the protagonists who have parted with over a decade of their lives to make the story possible.