Hi, I'm Mayuko, and I'm a Yappie.
Now if you haven't heard of this term before, Yappie stands for Young Asian Professional.
We're known to pursue financially comfortable jobs, not take huge risks in life and overall, just play it safe.
I honestly don't think that it's a bad thing to be a Yappie.
Nor is it probably like a great thing either.
Either way, I think this is the life that my parents and grandparents worked so hard for
so I like to think that I'm making them proud
Wait, hold up. But don't they want you to do meaningful work that impacts the lives of others?
Well, yeah!
But I'm just kind of doing that through a well-paying job.
But in this day and age, don't need you take risks to do what's right for yourself and your community,
even if it compromises your financial independence, because it's just the right thing to do?
Well, maybe?
So here's my story.
From a young age, my parents encouraged me to find a job that's financially stable.
It makes sense.
My parents were immigrants from Japan who didn't have a whole lot to fall back on as they raised me and my brother while they were finishing grad school.
The fear of the unknown. The fear of living as an immigrant in this country where they had no roots,
challenged us and meant that we needed to stay strong to support each other.
Not that things ever felt super rough for me growing up.
I was born and raised here, and I spoke English fluently
So I didn't feel much different from the white kid who was sitting next to me.
It felt like I had a pretty normal childhood.
Until maybe about high school came around and I thought about cultural identity issues but,
We'll talk about that in another video.
Anyways, I knew through that my parents struggles, I would have to make it on my own.
So I went to college and studied computer science to become a software engineer.
That was like my goal in life for 21 years.
Go to school. Graduate. And get a job.
It was a straightforward plan to me, and it was simple.
But it turns out that when you're striving for a milestone and not a mission, you can feel lost when you achieve it.
So, after I got a job and the whole honeymoon period of working 9 to 5 wore off I found myself asking
Now what? Was I going to be working 40 hour weeks as a software engineer for the rest of my life?
I mean, sure that sounded ok,
considering I never would have to worry about money again. Was I ever going to do something that was super
out there and risk everything that I had worked so hard to get?
Yeah, nope, there was no way I was giving that up.
but, did I want to find a greater purpose and meaning in life and
figure out who I am as a person and what my values are so that I could have a positive impact on the world?
Well, yeah! Definitely.
But I feel like I was afraid of something. Why couldn't I just do it? What was holding me back?
Well, it turns out that it's the same fear that kept my family together.
The fear of the unknown.
The uncertainty of
Making it through living in a country that I called home.
Once I realized this, I realized that every decision of my life was fueled by a strong sense of worry and fear.
I mean like, going to UCSD? because I didn't want to be far away from my family.
What about studying computer science?
The job prospects were good and I was good at math and science.
Deciding to be a software engineer?
Well, the pay isn't bad.
These decisions were all fueled by my worries. Would my family be okay? Would I have any regrets in life?
Will I be able to spend enough time with my family?
But, also these questions make me realize what's important to me and what I want in life.
I think that maybe the emotion of fear was a stronger emotion than anything else and you know
the more that I think about it
The more that I think that this way of living is totally okay
and it's okay to keep asking myself these questions frequently.
I mean, I never want to get to a point where I'm not putting myself or my family first
or putting ourselves in danger.
It's just like not part of my nature to do something like that
But it is safe and safe might not get me to the type of life that I want to live.
You see my biggest fear in life is dying without having done all the things that I wanted to do in life.
When I asked myself what those things actually were,
I found that some of those things were tangible and milestone oriented.
Getting a job, adopting a dog, getting married, having kids
But I also realized that I have some intangible goals too.
Like having an incredible human experience and feeling a wide range of human emotions
and getting to know all kinds of people
and very millenial of me but having a positive impact on the world
very millenial of me but having a positive impact on the world
I want to cry about things that I didn't even know I could cry about and
of course, laughing until I cried like a million more times.
And to be honest, I'm at a point in my life
Where a lot of those tangible goals luckily are doable
But I honestly have like no idea on how to achieve my intangible goals
Honestly, I couldn't even put into words what those goals were until recently because just the uncertainty used to scare me so much
But realizing what I want from life is forcing me to come to terms with the fact that I need to put myself in
challenging and difficult situations, that I wouldn't have put myself in before
and I know that I'm not quite ready to make like big risky moves in life like
I'm still going to make very responsible decisions
Actually, making videos is one way that I'm doing this
And I don't think making videos is necessarily like a safe route
It forces me to look at myself and understand who I am as an individual so that I can positively impact others.
But yeah, I'm still very much a Yappie. And I think there's nothing wrong with that
There's nothing wrong with playing it safe.
You gotta do what you gotta do, but I also feel like it's a waste to not try to understand who you are
Why you are and what you're gonna do about it?
We only have one life on this earth
And if you think about the vastness of the universe and how minuscule your life is compared to everything else
Then, you have a responsibility to live it so that it felt significant to you—
The person that matters most.