We don’t really need each other…
I am so afraid of being dependent. It is scary to need. I’m afraid of disappointment, of rejection…
I am lucky – I have my work, my income, my skills – there’s so much I can do by myself, and I can afford to pay for so much more. Over the years I’ve learned to be emotionally independent. I take care for my own needs. I do not want to be a burden to anyone. I can handle it all. I trained since I was little. As I fell asleep in my own little bed. As I sucked my own thumb. As I solved my own problems by myself. Like so many of us.
Meeting the loneliness
This resourcefulness, this efficiency, the invincibility has a dark side. Her name is loneliness, quietly penetrating the corridors of my soul, invisible – I’ve always had so many people around me.
“I will not go around asking,” my grandmother said. I am learning to ask.
“Don’t worry about me, I don’t need anything” my grandmother said. I am learning to accept that I need – kindness and care, being seen and appreciated, love and tenderness. I want to feel that I matter. And I want to be needed too – by others.
Only this way we can really meet – in our mutual needing, mutual interdependency, the giving and the receiving. These are the meetings I crave for. These are the meetings that feed my soul.
Can you allow yourself to need?
Miki Kashtan in her book ” Reweaving Our Human Fabric” writes about transcending the legacy of separation.
“We don’t really need each other.” … What better description could there be of the loss of community in today’s world?” – writes Charles Eisenstein, in his moving text that was my wake-up call – the full text below.
And how about you? Can you allow yourself to need?
…
This is an excerpt from a book Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. Let his words speak for themselves…
“We don’t really need each other.” … What better description could there be of the loss of community in today’s world? We don’t really need each other. We don’t need to know the person who grows, ships, and processes our food, makes our clothing, builds our house, creates our music, makes or fixes our car; we don’t even need to know the person who takes care of our babies while we are at work. We are dependent on the role, but only incidentally on the person fulfilling that role. Whatever it is, we can just pay someone to do it (or pay someone else to do it) as long as we have money. And how do we get money? By performing some other specialized role that, more likely than not, amounts to someone paying us to do something for them…
The necessities of life have been given over to specialists, leaving us with nothing meaningful to do (outside our own area of expertise) but to entertain ourselves. Meanwhile, whatever functions of daily living that remain to us are mostly solitary functions: driving places, buying things, paying bills, cooking convenience foods, doing housework. None of these demand the help of neighbors, relatives, or friends. We wish we were closer to our neighbors; we think of ourselves as friendly people who would gladly help them. But there is little to help them with. In our house-boxes, we are self-sufficient. Or rather, we are self-sufficient in relation to the people we know but dependent as never before on total strangers living thousands of miles away.
The commoditization of social relationships leaves us with nothing to do together but to consume. Joint consumption does nothing to build community because it requires no gifts. I think the oft-lamented vacuity of most social gatherings arises from the inchoate knowledge, “I don’t need you.” I don’t need you to help me consume food, drink, drugs, or entertainment. Consumption calls upon no one’s gifts, calls forth none of anyone’s true being. Community and intimacy cannot come from joint consumption, but only from giving and cocreativity.
Full text: http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/
