When we try to describe a child is just like the parents, some would say “the apple does not fall far from the tree”. I somehow start to question this statement:

Why do we have to be “the apple”?

What if we are the Eagles in the process of leaving the protection zone of our families?

To be honest, I totally believed in this slang before my Youth and Delinquency course last week in school. We were talking about labeling theory: that the delinquent youth would believe that they were going to be delinquent forever because others say so.

I acknowledge that the power of DNA is undeniable, and it will affect our lives till the death, so would the family habits. But this sentence in some ways denies the effort the younger generations put into their lives.

If they have delinquent parents and they commit delinquency acts, people would say “the apple does not fall far from the tree”, and if they have terrific parents and they do great in their future, the same thing would be around as well.

Then how about those great parents with delinquent children? Or the delinquent parents with respectable children? And most importantly, why should we be “the apple”?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this slang is worthless, but the idea that this presumption of a person is so limited.

In the old times, people did not usually go to places far away from home. Even after the marriage of younger generations, the whole family still lived together, which further shaped the characteristics of the younger ones under older generations' influence.

But now we are living in a much more opened world that we can get a hold of what is going on around the world through one simple click, we travel to a lot of places once unknown, and we study multiple cultures in other countries. We are not apples hanging on the tree and waiting to be mature anymore, rather we are the eagles flying all over to learn how to survive in this world.

As an international student, every time I go back home, I find my thoughts increasingly different from my families'. Living and studying in another country shapes my perspective differently, and I know I cannot go back to being the old me anymore.

Though I am always told that my actions and habits are just like my parents, I still don't believe so. Not that I don't want to be like them, but I have realized how much I have changed in the process of "surviving" in another environment by myself. Though with financial and mental support from my family, I still have changed too much in a way my family could not imagine.

We are learning to depend on ourselves from surviving in this world, though our families provide so much support to back us up, we are turning to be mature in our own ways.

Knowing that my family cannot support me in every aspect of my life, I know I have to be strong and fearless in multiple ways. And I must be MYSELF. The first thing I need to do to achieve the goal would be to try to be the eagle, to learn everything I need to live on, and to be independent.

We will still have something similar to our parents, but we will also be the new people, being an eagle to discover the world. After all, we cannot actually choose to be "the apple" that is always under protection.