Neeru Dhanda, a farmer’s daughter who won gold in shotgun at the Asian Games in Japan last week, when asked about her immediate priority, said she would want to make her family happy by building a good house. That is the most moral thing to do for a performer who reached the top despite hardships. Hopefully, she will also find courage to build a life for herself. Most of us fail to do so.
Family bonding is a biological phenomenon linked to survival, but parentalisation, the process by which children take on adult roles and responsibilities within the family, is more of a cultural inheritance which certain societies carry more than others. In the Indian context, the idea of a subservient son is as old as Lord Rama and the legend of Shravan. No wonder we mistake familial bonding for dharma and gratitude for indebtedness. And therein lies a paradox. The very mechanisms that enabled security, upward mobility and success - delaying gratification, assuming unprompted responsibility, working through exhaustion - become the architecture of suffering. Under assumed obligations, we keep postponing having a life until we feel we have earned the right to enjoy it.
The philosophical question
If your parents sacrificed so that you could have a better life, does refusing to enjoy that life honour them, or defeat the purpose of their sacrifice?
To answer this, let me share my own journey through success.
My uncle and my ladder
Recently, my cousins from Washington, D.C. visited us, and I asked my uncle if he was happy. "Nope," he said, before he'd even thought about it. I laughed. He was born into a poor family, worked multiple jobs, and raised three kids in the US. He sacrificed everything to build his success, and now has more money than most people can imagine. And yet, he isn't happy.
Deep down, I knew I'd have given the same answer. My own ladder to success took me to the US, then an MBA degree, a startup, funding, and a good exit. Something was still missing, so I went looking for it in yoga ashrams. Each one was supposed to bring me happiness. I still could not call myself happy.
Yoga brought stability to the mind, but a hypothetical question started troubling me. I imagined what would be written on my grave. “He was successful. He overthought everything, lived a miserable life, and left behind security for his kids.” Or: “He lived an interesting life and died smiling.”
Another existential question.
Which one would I want?
To answer that, we would want to define happiness.
Happiness is subjective, but let’s assume it's both a state of mind and a quality of life: the experience of more positive than negative emotion, combined with a sense that life is satisfying and meaningful.
So why wasn't I happy?
Growing up middle-class, we see all sorts of sacrifices our parents make to give us a good education, etc. Somewhere along the way, I had decided I wasn't yet worthy of what my parents gave up. Happiness was postponed because I felt I must “repay” the sacrifice that built my metaphorical house before being allowed to live in it. The only way I knew to become worthy of that was to secure more: more money, more safety, more proof that their sacrifice had paid off. And that more was never enough. I was struggling because I had built my identity on a biological reward system structurally designed to crash the moment a goal is met.
Tyranny of the False Self
In a way, I was trying to be my parents’ parent. When children construe parental sacrifice primarily through the lens of indebtedness, they feel that comfort must be repaid before it can be enjoyed. Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott describes this as the development of the “False Self”. The person constructs an achievement-fluent persona to meet parents' conditional needs, while the authentic self goes underground. The loop is maintained because the “False Self” is heavily rewarded by society through promotions, grades, salaries, etc. I failed to see the loop because it offered security at the cost of happiness, and would have remained so as long as I continued repaying the debt by being a socially productive son.
The mistake I was making
I mistook gratitude for indebtedness, believing that comfort must be constantly earned to repay parental sacrifice. Research says gratitude and indebtedness are both interpersonal emotions that arise when receiving a benefit, but they have different cognitive appraisals and behavioural consequences. Gratitude draws you closer to the person who helped you. Indebtedness feels like an obligation and comes with discomfort.
Gratitude says, "You did so much for me, now I want to care for you."
Indebtedness says, "You suffered for me, so I do not have the right to enjoy more than you did."
The rule we learn: If they sacrificed for me, I must keep sacrificing too.
Enjoying a life your parents could not have started to feel less like progress and more like betrayal. But you cannot repay your parents for their youth, their fear, their missed opportunities or their years of work. If you treat their sacrifice as a loan, the account can never close. A debt that can never be repaid becomes a chase that never ends. "Enough" keeps moving. First it is a degree, then a job, then a salary, then a house, then everyone else's security.
Research states that when self-worth depends on achievement, each success gives a short boost that fades quickly, so you need the next one. Psychologists call this contingent self-worth. A win feels good for a moment, then it becomes the new minimum.
When I ended my wait for ‘enough’
Having wandered around yoga ashrams, a deliberate pause made me realise no milestone, amount, or approval was ever going to tell me I'd done enough. So I decided it myself. For the last six months, I've written the same line in my journal every morning: Today I am going to be happy.
We always knew how to take initiative when life asked something of us. We studied, worked, saved and carried responsibilities before anyone reminded us. But when it came to happiness, we waited: for more money, less guilt, our parents' approval, one final achievement. None of these can tell us when we've done enough. We have to decide that ourselves. That is what it means to say happiness is an initiative, not a reward someone else can confer. This doesn't mean forcing yourself to feel cheerful. It means refusing to make your entire life conditional. You cannot command happiness, but you can stop postponing every condition that allows it.
What changed without the burden of indebtedness
The first shift was about worth. I had been letting other people's opinions decide whether I had done enough. Every letter, every reel, every post made me worry about how it would land. Now I genuinely don't care. I put my best foot forward, and then I let it go. That's when "enough" finally had room to arrive. The second was a pact with myself. My parents' sacrifices have their place in my life. But I can't live indebted to them. I need to live my own life.
Neither of these changes happened at once. The journal line is how I keep them. Every morning, ‘today I am going to be happy’ is a daily reminder to fight the conditioning that says I haven't earned it yet.
Success and happiness are not enemies. Discipline is not bad, and family responsibilities are not hindrances either. Our parents taught us sacrifice because it worked. But any useful strength becomes harmful when we lose the ability to decide when it is no longer needed.
Your parents may have taught you how to build a better life. A partner, a salary, an apology or a future achievement may improve that life. But none of them can decide when you are finally allowed to live it.
Initiate yourself into happiness, and make your parents proud.
And when the end comes, let the epitaph read: “He lived an interesting life and died smiling.”