Handcuffed by Obligation

Growing up Asian for me meant that a career in healthcare was always going to be a very real possibility. There’s something about the industry that is alluring, namely its stability. This is especially important for immigrant parents who came to the United States with little to nothing as mine did. It made sense, after all, that after living in such perilous conditions that they would only want for their future generations to have a semblance of stability.

It’s always been ingrained in me that a profession in healthcare signified having “made it.” Yet, on many days, it has felt less of an accomplishment and more like a well disguised trap. I am not the only one who feels this way, as Peter feels similarly. Working in healthcare, as corporate as it has become, definitely does not match up to what was sold to us in childhood. In the pursuit for security, we’ve found ourselves ensnared. This trap has consumed the very life for which we wanted security.

Peter and I have been very blessed in many ways, with our careers only one of the many things we’re grateful for. It goes without saying that we know just how good we have it already. After all, ff we were to be handcuffed, we’d much rather they be golden. Much of this is why we’ve been exploring other business ideas—maybe there’s an alternative route with more comfortable handcuffs?

The formula for success has always been paved with parental clairvoyance: study hard, get good grades, attend college, find a respectable profession, make a good income, and acquire stability. Healthcare seemingly subscribes to that model perfectly. This path also embodies so many values central to Asian households: community respect, financial success, service, sacrifice, and hard work. Noble as they are, these values, as delivered by healthcare, do not seem to bring about the same gratification that generations prior reaped.

Stability (and the allure of such) can easily start to dictate our lives. After all, to acquire and maintain such stability now often requires us to submit to being “good employees.” We dislike that we inch closer to being lapdogs, set to perpetually chase metrics and numbers. Even more strongly, we dislike that our time belongs to someone else. In this process, and with every working day, it feels as though we are active participants in diminishing the nobleness that once came inherent with healthcare.

Though Peter and I share similar backgrounds in our path into healthcare, we are very much at different junctions in our careers. Neither of us foresee leaving our positions imminently as we are satisfactorily engaged in our respective roles. However, he sees his position and employment as ultimately voluntary. That is, there is nothing anchors him to the job other than current satisfaction in solving problems and helping his team. For myself, it feels much more impossible to walk away for reasons both financial and personal.

Golden handcuffs are hard enough to remove when they’re the only thing anchoring you. When the career becomes an integral part of one’s identity as it has with mine, it feels evermore difficult. It’s hard to imagine myself loving or doing anything else besides medicine. It’s a sad state of affairs that medicine and healthcare continually morph into a profit-driven behemoth, slowly subsuming any and all smaller entities. As much as I enjoy my work, I’m not sure if I can entirely avoid an egress given the direction things are headed.

But aside from the obvious misgivings that belie healthcare and medicine, there are the customary and familial obligations. My parents have sacrificed a lot for me to pursue this level of privilege: would it be ungrateful or dishonorable in some way to step away? Though Peter’s parents have similarly sacrificed to give him the same opportunity, they have also embedded in him an entrepreneurial spirit. In this way, he feels much freer and supported should he pursue alternative routes outside of his current position. He’s even thought of running little franchises—talk about a pivot! It’s in his cute little noggin that our current side project was given life.

I have a very distinct memory in high school when I first expressed to my parents that I wanted to study history in college. Though partially in jest, I really did have an unbridled fascination for European history and literature at that time. Fortunately for their own mental health, I loved biology just as much, and thus pursued a degree in biology instead. Over the years of postgraduate education, they’ve observed just how difficult the journey has been (twice, actually, with my brother following the same footsteps, with even more strife initially). Despite seeing the toll it’s taken on us, they continually and understandably fall back on the age-old sunk cost fallacy.

If there’s one thing I’ve truly appreciated about our current jobs is that they’ve silently conferred respect and acceptance. Specifically, it has neutralized some of the stigma of being gay in otherwise traditional Asian households. My parents took a long time to come around to my being gay. They’re now eager to see me and Peter, often inquiring about the next steps in our lives. Though they’d never say it outright, I do think that they were able to digest the unfamiliarity of a gay relationship more easily with the familiar taste of traditional Asian success.

At the end of the day, Peter and I agree that success is defined by control, freedom, and flexibility in our lives. We’re inching closer everyday to our goals. At least in the financial sense, it is the most concrete and surefire method of achieving success in the long-run. Stability will still be an integral tenet, but we want to expand our definition of success. Peter’s been going full throttle at this for forever now. Whenever we talk about these daunting topics, it feels like I’m still barely staying afloat while Peter is doing laps around me. I’m lucky, though, that he is always mindful to catch me whenever needed.