Declare Your Independence
What does independence mean to you? Freedom, right? That freedom is long-coming and hard-won. As children we’re legally defined as “dependents”. Children need the attention and love of adults to survive. We become self-sufficient in many aspects of our lives as we mature. We become physically independent, socially independent, financially independent, and so on, as time goes by.
But as adults, how free are we?
A shadow of dependence looms over our lives. While we may be able to take care of our physical and financial wellbeing, our emotional dependence is displaced elsewhere. We often crave validation. We want our peers, our parents, our teachers, colleagues and friends to think well of us, to be impressed by us. We want a reputation for the sake of repute — we want to be seen as good, or happy, or tough, or fashionable, or brilliant. It leaves us stuck on a treadmill of neediness, keeping mental score of the friends we have, the invitations we get, the compliments that come our way.
How eager can we get? People go bankrupt for validation, they go under the surgeon’s knife for validation, people die for validation. The price of validation is unlimited when it’s out of our control.
True independence is to be self-sufficient in every way possible. You don’t need approval from other people, you don’t need praise, you don’t…
