Latent desire to Become

 According to Freud the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg with unconsciousness making the bulk unseen. In his book Incognito, neuroscientist David Eagleman points out that most of the time we do not have conscious control of how we think and feel. According to Buddhist psychology people tend to act habitually, unconscious of their actions. These so called "latent tendencies" govern our feelings, mental  and bodily responses resulting in how we often act or behave.

Among the latent tendencies there is the latent tendency for 'Becoming" which is somewhat a desire to become something or someone or a sense of what you are in relation to the world at large. In the west it may be a desire to explore one's uniqueness and define oneself by the difference, while in the East it may be a constant desire to become someone who is accepted or respected in the community. My thought is focused on the later. There is always an underlying need to adapt to conventional expectation. This latent tendency to become that 'someone' can be intensified or aggravated by previous bad experiences of rejection or humiliation. It becomes the reality in a person's view of the world such that he may obsess over how others think of him.

I think Asians generally like to compare with others and are more afraid of losing face, hence the fear of failure and fear of missing out (FOMO). This leads them to hanker for labels collectively considered as marks of success and pursue conventional paths which may or may not bring about true happiness. In fact quite often the continuous strive for these benchmarks or the inability to achieve them bring much emotional suffering. 

What triggers me to rant as above is upon reading a letter written by a tuition teacher in the forum page of our newspaper. She recounted experiences with parents who pressurized their children to perform in school exams. One child expressed hatred for his parents while another harboured thoughts of ending her life due to the stress. Perhaps the parents meant well to groom their children for an "easier" adult life. But it is wiser for these parents to be aware of their children's overall well being and not to succumb to their latent tendencies to Become the labelled successful parent "whose children made it to XXX school, YYY college and ZZZ company" or even worse instill in their children similar latent tendencies for an entire lifetime.