Why you should disappoint your parents | Desiree Akhavan (re-release)

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What do you do when the life your parents built for you doesn't fit the life you want?
Filmmaker Desiree Akhavan has spent a long time sitting with that question.

**Desiree Akhavan** (0:20)
When does your life get to be your own and not your parents or your communities? As the daughter of Iranian immigrants, I was raised to believe the answer is never.

**Elise Hu** (0:31)
In her 2023 talk, she traces her journey from the kind of daughter she thought she had to be to who she actually is. She makes the case for why disappointing the people you love most might be the most honest and important thing you can do for yourself and your community.

**Desiree Akhavan** (0:47)
I let go of my idea of good and trying to fit into it, other people's notion of good. And I ended up finding my own.
My parents are the heart of me. They built me, but they don't get to determine the rules of my life.

**Elise Hu** (1:01)
That's coming up right after a short break. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Desiree Akhavan** (1:16)
I was five years old when The Little Mermaid came out, and I was convinced it was a work of genius. My mother did not agree. To be fair, she had a point. In the film, the mermaid disobeys her father to chase some guy and put her entire species at risk.
And to my mom, she was the ungrateful, spoiled product of the very worst in American culture. Mom wanted me to be like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. And in case you forgot, Belle volunteers to replace her father as a prisoner to a bloodthirsty beast for the rest of her life, which to this day remains the base level of sacrifice expected of you as a child of immigrants.
When does your life get to be your own and not your parents or your communities? As the daughter of Iranian immigrants, I was raised to believe the answer is never.
But I would like to argue that the immigrant parents of the world might have it wrong. In fact, I think you should disappoint your parents. I think that maybe disappointing your parents could be the best thing that ever happened to you. My parents were good, obedient Iranian children. Their marriage wasn't arranged, it was introduced, and they were married three months after meeting. He was 26 and she was 19 When I was 19, I found myself seated at a table with my parents and their friends when one of them said, honestly, I would rather my children to have cancer than to be gay. They say to me, mama, you are being the homophobia, but what can I say? It is the truth.
And everyone laughed because, yeah, it was the truth. And because none of them would ever have to worry about one of their kids being gay. They had all raised good, obedient, Iranian kids who would marry other good, obedient, Iranian kids. I told my parents I was in love with a woman six years after that conversation. I did it with my eyes closed, like I was jumping off a skyscraper. When my mom's upset, she wants all the information, like she is a bad news detective, and she's trying to sniff out the even worse betrayal that you're hiding behind your back.
My dad is the complete opposite. You can tell it's real bad when he goes completely silent. It's kind of like you flip his off switch.
Why can't you keep your private life private? Is what my brother wanted to know. He was born in Iran and left before he turned one, but those early days managed to infuse him with a sense of propriety that's always eluded me. Because I was born in New York, which is why I am an entitled millennial cliché.
I'm incapable of lying, and it is a character flaw. It's gauche to be so straightforward. There's no elegance to it. Iranians communicate their meaning in the spaces between their words. The implications. You have to learn a second, silent language. There's even a word for it, tarof. The art of disingenuous generosity.
We're raised to keep offering things we don't actually want to offer and say things that we don't actually mean, but must out of mandatory, aggressive, politeness. To this day, when you go to pay for a cab in Iran, they'll say, no, no, no, no, no, for you it's free. You are like a sister, a daughter, a mother to me. I could never charge you. And then it's your job to convince them to charge you. And then once you've convinced them to charge you, you need to haggle them down so they don't rip you off.