Blog

by Dee Putri

First.

I think the first people who have expectation of us are our parents. In Indonesia, gender is really important to parents–they really want a boy or they really want a girl. I’ve seen childhood photos of a male friend of mine in skirts because his mom really wanted to have a daughter. One of my friends even has a girl’s name, Pinky. And if your parents want a boy and you’re a girl, well, maybe you’ll have an experience like Robin Scherbatsky, whose dad named her Robert Charles Scherbatsky Jr. after himself. Tough love, baby. Tough love.

Parents also have their own expectations that their child will grow up to be the best person. I think we all can understand it, because we all want to be our best selves. But sometimes, our parents have a different idea of “best” than we do. Like my brother for example—he’s a good kid, always listens to our dad. My dad wanted him to be a solider, but (lucky him) he is colorblind. So instead my dad decided he wanted my brother to be teacher or lecturer (now he’s an accountant). I think that maybe people have kids so they can have a second chance at reaching their own goals, even if they know that what they want might be different from what their kids want. There’s a speech from Life Happens that reminds me of this: “Do you know how many kids in my high school committed suicide cause they didn’t know what they wanted to do? Direction is really the greatest gift we [parents] can give them [kids].” Well, I completely disagree. We don’t need “direction.” We need support in what we want to do, not just what our parents want for us.

Second.

We’re also all living in a world filled with societal expectations. Our cultures try hard to define people, putting everyone into separate boxes based on things like race and gender and religion. When we cross those lines and don’t behave the way we’re “supposed” to, we can be punished–sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically. And because we all live in this society, we all also have expectations for one another. And not just based on stuff like race or religion or gender: we all want nice neighbors, cool friends, great teachers, lovely strangers. But maybe we’re expecting too much. Nowadays I try not to expect anything from people before I get to know them, because many things upset me. Instead, I work on becoming the kind of person that I would like to meet.

Third.

Growing up, we all have our idols. We want to be our idols. We want to be cool, beautiful, or witty just like them. But sometimes we get really disappointed about them when they do things that make us mad, like tweeting rape jokes. We feel like we’ve been let down. But recently, I’ve learned to kill my idols. Life is easier for me when I’m not obsessing over someone else (it was tiring, really). And just like it’s not good for us, it’s not good for those we idolize, either. In my favorite South Korean reality shows, there are comedians and singers and actors and girl or boy bands (literal idols!). It’s crazy to hear how devoted these performers are to their fans. It feels like some of them even sacrifice their life for fan service. It’s been like this for a while–Moon Hee-joon, of 90s boyband H.O.T., said that he would give up marriage for his fans. Intense, right? And actress Yang Mi Ra had her life turned upside down by plastic surgery. She wanted to get rid of her young girl image, so she had surgery and later she did a “sexy” photoshoot–but it backfired: “After getting scolded like that by others, I started to have a fear of seeing people. After the incident, the way people looked at me changed. After that, I could only stay at home. Actually, I was fine but people around me were too worried, especially my family,” she said. Later she went to New York and she got offers as a model. “Too many people who didn’t know me hated me. Frankly, I hate that. I like to socialize and make friends. People become scary. In New York, I had lots of self confidence. I became a new person and I came back to South Korea. So all the talk and discussion about me, I never thought of trying to understand it because I was so happy.”

Fourth.

Your self expectation. I didn’t forget about this. I put it last because it is the most important thing ever. The good news is, you don’t have to have one if you don’t want to. I’m in my early 20s right now and I am still figuring out my life. I don’t really know what I wanna be. Right now, I just want to have enough sleep, internet and food.  Oh, and confidence! But I don’t worry about being cute or sexy or funny. Thinking about those South Korean idols again (not just the idols actually, maybe everyone everywhere), there’s an obsession with cuteness and sexiness, men and women alike. They’re expected to be funny so they would be on more variety shows. I’m thankful that none of these things are my problems. Instead, I focus on confidence and supporting myself and ridding myself of insecurities. Once our insecurities disappear, we’ll be living the dream.