I have a lot of things on my mind that I haven’t written down in the last couple days, but I need to write about this first because I’m so frustrated when I listened to the number 1 trending songs in Vietnam. The same name is “Mang tiền về cho mẹ” which literally means ” Brings money home to Mommy”. I couldn’t bare the thought of writing the title with such materialistic thing, so I put love instead. Because if I should have a daughter, I want her to say it, I want Minh to tell me: ” Má, I’m bringing love with me to visit you.”, not home, because she will have her very own home.
I saw this song couple days ago, but I ignored it because even by reading the title, it frustrates me. But since a lot of my friend recited it, I decided to give it a try and listen to the entire song. You know what? I couldn’t finish it one go, I get so frustrated, I needed to stop it, gave it a whole day, and now finishing the songs before writing about it in here. I’m so angry, I need to vent about the songs in this blog.
This song is the exact indication of how fundamentally dysfunctional the Vietnamese society is. And the fact that a lot of my highly-educated-friends recite it is the proof of how materialism this society is.
I can still feel my blood boiling while typing these words down, I don’t know why the lyrics just makes me so angry. Perhaps it’s because it’s the 2 most topic that I hated: “Money” and “Mommy”.
- Money: The song didn’t mention anything about love or happiness, but Money, instead of bringing love and light to visit mom, it’s money that was needed to bring back to Mom. At the end of the song, there’s a little words saying:
So the entire song is about money, and the last frame saying “Bringing happiness back to mom”. I think it would be fair to make an assumption that the author in this song means MONEY equals HAPPINESS. It’s sad you know, very sad, when the society agrees with this kind of definition. It’s the number 1 trending song on Youtube means a lot of people in the society resonate with the songs.
You know the kind of like ” Mom works so hard her life to raise us up, and now we have to pay her back” . That’s completely fucked up. I talked about it couple time in my blog, the child didn’t ask for the life he/she was given, it’s mom’s choice. So if Mom decided to gave her life and soul to the child, it’s her decision, she didn’t have the rights to ask for it back because the child never asked for the debt of life to begin with.
2. Forever a child: “Bước ra đời là ông này bà nọ, trở về nhà là 1 đứa con ngoan” . I can’t even begin to tell you how messed up this idea is. This means that the child is never allowed to grow up, to have his/her own opinion. This means that the child is forever a little child. That’s very dysfunctional in my opinion. My mom used to tell me: ” Bây giờ mẹ không có quyền được ý kiến nữa phải không? Mẹ không có quyền được nói con nữa phải không?” Or one of the story my friend just told my recently :” Tại sao mẹ không có quyền được hỏi?” . You know I honestly truly wanted to respond to those Mom: “ Yes mom, you don’t have the rights to intervene in my life anymore. I’m a grown up now, you raised me to be a grown up and I made my own decision, live my own life separated from you. You need to have your own life too, please don’t try to live your life through me anymore. The pains and burden you are going to bring with you will carry through me through many generations. It needed to stop here, I won’t allow it to continue. You need to grow up and be responsible for your own life, Mom”
But the author seems to be so fine about it. He talks as if this is his life destiny. The song also discusses about how deeply co-dependent between the son and the mom. “Mang tiền về cho mẹ hiền, để mẹ may thêm đôi cánh”, “Đưa tiền cho mẹ, mẹ là tiền vệ”. Meaning the child will forever be depended on his mommy, like if I give you the money, you will need to give me more means to be successful in life.
“Muốn được nghe mẹ mắng mỗi ngày để con thấy mình còn chưa được khôn ngoan” , this is another extremely wrong definition about love ” Thương cho roi cho vọt” , yeah you love me so you yell at me. That’s not what love is. First, the new generation is much more educated than the older generation ( only some exceptions), so I think it’s fair to assumed that most of the kid now is much more informed, has much more knowledge, been to much more place, expose to much more culture, so the kid is much more well informed. In the workplace, we would say that you don’t know better, but suddenly at home, we would bow to someone who knows so much little than us simply because she’s older than us. No, I think that’s completely wrong.
My mother used to be passive-aggressively told me that:” Oh so now you are more educated, you looked down on me, and I don’t have the right to say anything” .
I wanted to say: ” Yes mom, I’m much more educated than you, so I know much better than you. I have far more experience in life than you because I travelled the world, and you decided to stop growing and learning ever since you gave birth. That’s not my fault, please don’t put it on me. You had plenty of time to study and to learn, but you decided not to. And I don’t look down on you, but it’s true, your opinion is invalid to me.”
3. “Về đây mà gầy là mẹ cho ăn đòn” . This sentence makes me sad, because there’s nothing that the mother wants from the child except for that he’s not skinny.
Have you heard of Maslow theory? Well you can read about it all over the Internet, so I’m not wasting your time to hear me explain about it. Long story short, it has 5 layers, and the bottom layers, the basic fundamental thing about human needs in physiological: Food. The mother – and the society doesn’t care anything about any other needs, as long as you are fat, you are okay as a human. Obviously, the Maslow theory is also a basic model, but we can use it sometimes, in this case, I think it’s very relevant. That how basic the Vietnamese society is, the bottom of the line, nothing about safety, love, self-esteem etc but only food. I remembered that I overheard one of the conversation between Camel and his mother: His mother calls to remind him to eat some vegetable. I thought that was very odd, because it showed that’s the relationship is very basic. It’s not about how happy you are, how was your day, or about your new news but straight to what you should eat. To me, that’s the least of my concern, because a capable grownup should know what to eat, but I would worry whether or not he’s happy or what can I do how help him grow. The man stop growing with food for a long time, what he needs to grow is his mind.
But this is so common and so popular in the society that it’s a norm. Everyone accepts this, except me. I feel like the odd one out, because the thing that I care about, nobody care about. I cannot resonate with the people around me, because to be honest with you, they are so basic, I cannot sit and gossip about the celebrity because that’s just none of my business. I cannot sit and watch “game show” with my mother and sister because it’s noisy and I can use my time so much better. I cannot sit and watch “youtube” with my aunt and cousin because it’s so stupid, it frustrated me to even have to listen to it. I’m sorry that I sounded like I’m bragging, or being entitled. Maybe I am braggin and entitled, but I cannot related, and resonate with those “simple things” . I feel like I’m living 100 years ahead.
If I have children, 20 year from now I would call them up once in awhile and ask them: ” Are you happy? What can I do to make you more happy?” As simple as that, nothing much more.
4. “Muốn đối xử mẹ như bà hoàng, để mẹ có thể ngồi xơi nước, và mua cho mẹ túi Dior ”
There are 2 things that is wrong in this phrase, one that’s about the son, and one that’s about the mother.
a. He wanted to treat her like a queen, giving her all the money, so that she can sit and drink tea, is that all she ever wanted to do with her life? What about her dream and hope, what about the kind of person she wanted to become. Through his eyes, she’s not a person with hope and dream, but a mother like a functional role, so he doesn’t want her to work anymore but to sit like a baby doll. That’s a tragedy in the relationship between mother and son. The mother put all her souls and life into raising her son, so much so that she completely lose herself as a person. So much so that her son doesn’t see her as a person with hope and dream, but a baby doll that he can decorate with Dior bag and put to sit just to sip tea. And she’s probably happy with that too. It’s so sad. 😔
b. There’s an implied message in this sentence that everyone understand:” I wanted to treat my mother like a Queen 👸 , so she could treat me like a Prince🤴 “ . I asked Camel about his decision to move back to his mother, I mentioned that he will lose his freedom, you know what his answer to me was, one of the benefit is to have someone cook for him, he wouldn’t have to worry about his meals. I know it’s not the main reason, but it’s one of the benefit. It’s the same thing like this singer, I gave you the money, I will treat you like a queen, but with the implied message that you will need to take care of me. You will cook for me, clean after me, take care of me… again, like a child. That’s not what love is.
Love means you will take care of the person you love, and give them all that they need so they can flourish, they can develop as a person. Or in this case, helping his mom to find the person she once lost, to find the dream that she once had. That’s true love. Not this kind of “conditional” love.
I’m sorry if any of my word offend you. I didn’t intend to publish this to the public reader. It’s just that I was so frustrated when I listened to the songs and I needed a place to vent about the unfairness, the unjust in this society. “The norm” that the Vietnamese society accepted is so fundamentally broken that it broke generations of the young. I’m worried for the young mind, because the country will forever be in this vicious circle, creating dysfunctional child like me who spent the better half of her life unlearned what she has been taught and fought really hard just to be able to grow up mentally and emotionally.
I was lucky, I escaped successfully. I still had my some scars in my heart, but I get rid of the majority of the wrong perception about love and family. I believe that my future family will be a happy one, my children gonna grow up healthy, happy and functional. Twenty year from now, my children will listen to this song and tell me: ” Mom, I didn’t know how fucked up your society was, this is not love, money does not equal happiness”. I would agree with them with a big big smile, and show them this blog post that I write. That is the one thing I am absolutely sure about.