"The purpose of my birth is to change the world through my writings."

Friday, January 15, 2016

Strive not to be independent, but to be interdependent

The Oxford Dictionary defines interdependence as the ‘dependence of two or more people or things on each other.’ But most of us today fail to realize the significance of this term or its necessity in our lives.

When a kid is born, she has no clue of the world around her. So she is raised in a way that is supposed to empower her in every way, in order to help her grow into a refined individual. She is spoon fed almost every single thing-food, information, knowledge, money and other material things that would help her grow. As soon as the child reaches the stage of adolescence, the sole motive of growing up into a rational and a strong human being translates into the motive of being independent as soon as possible. But the most dangerous part of that phase comes when, and if, the urge of being independent becomes an escape. When this happens, we tend to see independence as a stage where life is easier, and we begin to associate the feeling of happiness and fulfilment with it. But the truth is, our lives just cannot get any easier or happier by trying to derive happiness from external sources of any sort. Human beings are a type of species that can never be completely satisfied, and the desire of being in a hypothetical phase in the future with one hundred percent fulfilment can never be completely satisfied. We will always want more and more to feel fulfilled. Human urges, desires and temptations only increase if the previous ones are satisfied. This is a natural tendency of our species. When we begin to associate the idea of independence as a futuristic escape for happiness and fulfilment, we usually tend to get dissatisfied with our lives in the present. This leads to either a life of self-doubt, uncertainty, resentment or hatred towards oneself. Any negativity of the sort stops us from achieving our goals in the present, and leaves us with the option of creating our future in the future, which is impossible. This is quite ironical, because nurturing such negative emotions within ourselves makes us more and more dependent on the people around us. We begin to question ourselves, which usually leads to the inability to make our own decisions, and so we eventually lose control on our lives in both the short and the long term. We begin to get controlled by our insecurities, or simply by the fear of the future. Some people go to extremes to quench their desire of achieving this stage of independence and fulfilment. They go through a mid-life crisis, create a huge gap or delay in their relationships, or simply move out of their marriages and abandon their relationships. Or worse, they could even resort to crimes or commit suicide.

One must realize that in order to achieve the stage of overall development, all of us must abide by the principle of interdependence for living a happy life. Believing in inter-dependence means to be self-aware enough to understand that there is strength to stand on our own, but there is also a greater strength on relying and depending on others along with that. Developing strong relations with the people around us, and a healthy co-existence is important; it helps in the overall development of the individual as well as a community.

So today, I send this message to all the young and the ambitious people out there. Let go of the desire to settle. Let go of the desire to settle with your narrow idea of what you call a happy, fulfilled and an independent life. It will only lead you astray. Life could be much bigger and better than that. Work towards your goals, but only to depend on one another, and to empower and uplift each other. That’s the real quality of a winner. She never settles, or buys the idea of ultimate perfection or fulfilment. Moreover, she is quite aware of the fact that she is a winner, not only because she wants to be, but also because that’s what the people around her think she is.

“You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion – he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.” – Julien Smith.


Copyright © Upasana Goyal 2016

1 comment:

  1. Very well written I see you are already a writer . I strongly recommend you to be active on quora and reply to answers and promote your blog , people like you are ruling quora .
    Specifically I liked following statements " Human urges, desires and temptations only increase if the previous ones are satisfied. This is a natural tendency of our species. 

    " When we begin to associate the idea of independence as a futuristic escape for happiness and fulfilment, we usually tend to get dissatisfied with our lives in the present"

    "We begin to get controlled by our insecurities, or simply by the fear of the future. "
    And the way you structured the blog post looks professional.

    ReplyDelete