Society tells us that we need to be independent, that anyone who has a need ought to be taking care of it themselves and that anyone who cannot take care of themselves is weak and pathetic. We prize those who are able to isolate themselves, we consider them strong and brave, worthy of idolization. However what we don't realize is that the entirely independent person hasn't been taught this life skill necessary for success and happiness, they have learned to be fearful and that the only person worthy of trust is themselves. Living a purely independent life is crippling to a bold life.
We are back at this idea of risk. Living independently is safe, it is easy, and it is boring! But learning to live with dependency is learn to live boldly. See other people can fail, other people can not catch you, they can refuse to help you and when you ask another person to be there for you, they will inevitably at some point in time fail and that hurts. But think about a time someone has really come through for you – how did it make you feel? When people do pull through on our behalf it builds our confidence and it encourages our relationships, in fact you could argue that dependency is one of the key factors to a relationship. If we never depend on our friends, they start to feel useless and un-needed and before we realize what has happened our entire relationship has disappeared.
Now I'm not encouraging an unhealthy kind of dependency. But we have to learn to balance our independence with some amount of dependence.
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