This week I've put it in my weekly goals to sit down and write a heart-to-heart letter to my dad, explaining why I'm here in the Philippines and asking for his help. After two years of life in the Philippines, my father still asks when I'm "going to come home", he questions why I still push myself with training and he is concerned about my business though he knows very little about it.
My life isn't safe, in his eyes.
He questions how I'm going to retire while I question why I'd even want to retire.
He questions what's going to happen if I get sick while I question him when was the last time I was sick.
He questions why I don't want to come home while I question he why can't he accept the fact that I am home, my home is the Philippines.
He questions why I don't miss family while I question his definition of family and why can't he see I have family here.
He questions why I don't see all the opportunities for me in Canada while I question why he can't see the opportunities that are already at play and a reality for me here in the Philippines.
He questions why I don't do my business in Canada while I question why I can't do it here.
His questions and my questions, they clash with each other, obviously.
Unlike Skittles who comes from a family of entrepreneurs, I don't and so the mentality is very different. My father was an accountant since finishing high school till when he retired. He's all about the calculations. And, for the most part, my family consists of members who stuck with their first job, got married and had kids. They lived very "white-picket fenced lives", as I call it. Safe lives. Lives with consistency and safety, but also lives with mortgages, loans,... financial responsibilities. They also had steady pay checks though so the mortgage and car payments got paid with that.
I once was called the Benjamin Button of the family and though I didn't really think it pertained to me because in the movie the character Benjamin keeps getting younger with age, they explained that I am him because the older I get the "less adulting" I do.
I had the steady pay check and the apartment. Then I gave them up to start Hulk's Boxing.
I had the four-legged babies and the husband. Then I gave them up to free myself and go to Canada.
I again then had the steady pay check and apartment. And again I gave them up to start a new life in the Philippines.
Now I have no steady pay check, I share an apartment, I do have another four-legged baby... and I'm happier than I've been in a very long time. I don't have the money to fly to Canada because all my money goes into either my boxing or building my business, Empowered.
My father will never come to the Philippines to see my business or visit me, I know this because even after living in Korea for 11.5yrs and making what was once the biggest boxing club in the entire country, he still didn't come to visit me. I don't expect him to come because I've accepted that he won't. I just wish he was more supportive of what I'm doing. I wish when he talks about his hard time growing up and when he was younger he'd see that that's exactly what I'm going through but with him, because of him.
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