A brief monologue involving names, expectations, and the irony that can come from putting them in the same room and forcing them to talk.
When I was born, my parents had the forethought to prepare two names to choose from. Being born as a girl meant that the name Victoria was what stuck around, but if I had been a boy, it could have easily have been Nicholas. The reasoning behind choosing the names is about as expected as it could be, for a baby name; both were names that my parents enjoyed, and both owe their meanings to the word “victory” if only to slightly different contexts. It was a meaning they had wanted to give me, in the hopes that I would be a “victorious person” in this life. To this day, I still can’t say how much of it actually worked—I always believe it to be something I’ll only finally learn through hindsight—but I have a feeling that it will all catch up with me sometime later. Because in the end, what’s in a name?
Quite a few things, in fact. And even more, when you’ve been given more than one.
And that’s the thing here: I have a second name. An entire name, given to me after one fateful meeting with the monks when I was still an infant. One with a meaning chosen to help balance the qualities I already had, with the ones I lacked. They said I was too cold, laid up with too many chances to be isolated and alone as I grew up. Not enough fire, not enough passion. So they gave it to me, when they gave me the name Fèngyìng, using the characters 鳯 (lit. [male] phoenix, firebird) and 映 (lit. to reflect [light], to shine) to spell it. A decent name with a straight meaning and in many ways, very indicative of the person it belongs to. At least, in a symbolic sense.
There’s a certain significance in a name. Names have power. Names are power. And having two doesn’t change that fact. I’d even go as far as to say that, to some extent, it could even become a problem. It doesn’t change the fact that I have it, but neither does that change the fact that I believe in its influence and I intend to live with that in mind.
But if I’m being honest, my mother seemed to have different intentions in mind when she was raising the younger me. I was taught the virtue of respecting my elders, growing up. To be good by and to my parents; to take care of them and engage in good conduct (the kind that brings a good name to the family) amongst other things. And it’s far from an uncommon lesson—within the Asian-American community, the lessons of filial piety are hardly ever not seen, and the expectations of following such a thing are even stronger back in the East than they are here in the United States. And it’s even more difficult to ignore it when the roof over your head belongs to the people who have been teaching you this mindset your whole life, because that’s just the way they know life to be.
Case in point, the classic “How are you going to act when you have a family to take care of too?” question, and all of its lovely variations.
See, the thing about filial piety is that you’re expected to do as your family expects of you. For sons, it’s to carry on the family legacy by passing down the family name to the next generation. For daughters, much of the core remains the same; to bring the family honor through a family of their own. But with the rise of the most recent generation trends, that expectation becomes difficult to meet. The practice of raising a family upon entering adulthood has become more of an ideal than a reality, but it’s also the result of the shifting dynamics in today’s society.
It’s enough to make me wonder why my mother still holds onto the expectation, and why she acts as if she expects me to allow her to make my choices for me.
Maybe it’s a need to cling to the familiarity of the past, or some innate desire to control what isn’t entirely understood. Maybe it’s something entirely different from what I think it to be. But despite the uncertainty, I find that to be the least of my worries, because my expectations for her lean in a different direction; Why?
Why does she still hold all these expectations? Why does she expect me to follow them? Why doesn’t she consider the possibility that I may not want the same things for my life that she does? Why did she choose my name and its meaning, when nothing in life has guaranteed that it will work in her favor the way she may have expected it to? Why won’t she listen to the things I’m trying to say?
These questions and more—they’re what I often find myself wondering in the aftermath of our arguments. Sometimes things work out, and we compromise. Most times, we continue to clash until we’re at each other’s throats. In hindsight, it’s an unhealthy relationship. In practice, it’s a vicious exchange. I can only imagine how things will continue to escalate in the future, if we continue down this path.
But hopefully one day, it’ll get better. After all, if it takes losing the battle to win the war, I know which victory I would rather enjoy.