“When are you going to stop this nonsense and get a real job?”

Olivia stared at her mother, dumbfounded. She had just told her the good news about passing her probation at one of the world’s largest humanitarian NGOs. To celebrate, she’d even decided to surprise her mother by treating her to high tea at the Peninsula, where, only a few months prior, she had arranged a successful meeting between her supervisor and the NGO’s global CFO to secure special project funding allocation to the Hong Kong bureau.

“Mum, why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Don’t be naive. Happiness means nothing without success. Didn’t we raise you better?”

“But this is a big deal.”

“Remind me how working for free is ‘a big deal’ when your father and I made sacrifices to put you through college.”

The accusation stung Olivia, but there it was. The familiar resentment between them.

“I will not be working for free. I have been offered a full salaried position.”

“Forgive me, dear daughter,” intoned Fanny dangerously, dripping with sarcasm as she leaned across the table, “I must have imagined the last year we supported you as an unpaid intern competing to become a glorified secretary at a-”, Fanny leaned back and folded her arms as she spat “-charity.” She seethed in anger. Stupid. Ungrateful. Unworthy.

Olivia could see every unspoken disappointment hurled as an accusation, and she could not imagine why she had even thought her mother would have changed to have any capacity to care about her dreams. Her mother truly was a force of nature, but one that only destroyed, never nurtured.

“No-one paid for me while I was an intern. I supported myself,” began Olivia, but before she could continue, her mother interrupted.

“And who gave you the apartment you’re living in now? Who paid for your studies so that any company would even look at you? Who gave you every opportunity in life so that by the time you left high school you even had savings set aside for you? Savings that were decades in the making. Savings that your father and I could have spent on ourselves if we knew our daughter was going to squander her family’s sacrifices, so she could pursue some passion project for peanuts and petty praise. Is this why you invited me here,” Fanny gestured sharply at their upscale surroundings and narrowed her eyebrows to a hard knot, “so you could get a pat on the back while expecting mummy dearest to pay yet again?”

Olivia couldn’t believe how her mother was twisting things to make her feel guilty for wanting to make a difference in the world. It was true, she had had more privileges than many, which is why she felt she had a moral obligation to dedicate herself in service to those who did not have the same opportunities her family had given her. No, not opportunities, she reminded herself. Obligations. In retrospect, her family had never given her true opportunities, merely instructions on what they wanted her to do and an expectation that she be grateful. Every major decision had been picked for her, even going to law school had been her parents’ idea. And while it was true that the apartment she was living in was her family’s, her parents had left it empty when they emigrated to Canada and had no plans to sell or rent it out. So Olivia living in her childhood home was hardly an imposition. She knew what she had to do, at least for now. She rose.

“Have a safe flight, mother.”

Food for thought: How can learning how and when to pick your battles allow you to maintain your emotional resilience?