American work culture pushes us to “win,” but I simply want to “be.”

Image by Nappy on Pexels

I walked away from my senior-level 9 to 5 job a few years ago — a seven-year-long career predicated by my immigrant parents’ high expectations, two expensive degrees, and a drive to win a respectable livelihood through work.

Prior, I grew up in New Hampshire by way of two Haitian-born parents who, independent of one another, immigrated to America in the 1970s — my father, driven by hope and the industrial American dream, and my mother by sheer force and abuse. Bred as a first-generation Haitian-American and only child, I quickly learned that it was my duty to take the torch and run as far, and climb as high as I could to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s mountain top. Success in my family translated to high academic achievement and money, and the only way to access said status was through the linear professions of doctor, lawyer, or engineer. So at the ripe age of 5, I closed my brown eyes and covered them with my small, but developing black hand as my other hopeful hand reached into the bottom of a top hat. I pulled out a tiny shriveled slip of white paper, read my fate, and it was done — I chose the honorable profession: doctor. But in retrospect, I chose the beaming smiles and approval from the adults who gleefully reacted to my frequent incantation, “I want to be a doctor when I grow up!” The external validation gave me a…