Filial Piety

Parents: How is University?

Me: How is University? HOW IS IT? HOW IS IT, YOU ASK? What do you think? Since you are so smart and know what's best for me, surely, you know how things are going, right? Why bother asking, then?

In case you cannot come to a conclusion on your own because you refuse to accept the fact that your child is leading a miserable life weighed down by your expectations and your tendency to romanticise your child's every decision, every second of existence, every achievement and every single failure, then I, as your beloved child, shall let you know directly that I am as unhappy as I can be and I have never known true happiness. If I have, I must have forgotten it and I owe it to your upbringing.

I must thank you for one thing however, and if it is one thing I am grateful to you for, I am thankful that you beat me into playing the piano. When I cannot write with my hands, I can at least play with them.

Right, I was in the middle of explaining to you how University is going for me.

I hate it, as I do with most institutions that are erected solely for profit into tricking foolish pigs like you to fund them while also selling them the soul of your flesh and blood that you love so much in promise of a prosperous future. I say, if you don't believe in Heaven, then don't believe in Universities. Unfortunately for me, you innocent lamb, you believe in Paradise. Do you not see the similarities between those false beliefs?

Yes, this is what I learn in University. You do not like it, you say? Then that makes the three of us, now, doesn't it! But of course, the decision to have myself chained up and chipped away wasn't mine to make, it was yours. You gave me freedom to decide on the place I would be confined to and the methods of repression I find least repulsive, but I would hardly call it freedom, only coercion. Inevitably, there was no other way you were going to be proud of me, if I did not die for you, every single day.

Do not cry for me, but yourself. Your sacrifices are all for naught; your hopes and dreams were used to deceive you.

Parents: Huh? What did you say?

Me: University is fine.