Discovering the joy of inter-dependence

During one of those trips when I was 15 years old, one of our co-passengers was a young man of about 22 years who had just begun working. He got talking to us and mentioned how his first job was so exciting and how he loved living in a different city learning to manage on his own

When I was a child, every summer my mother, brother, and I would get on a train to go to our ancestral home in Punjab to visit my grandparents. The train journey was long about 36 hours, and we would often end up talking to our fellow passengers. During one of those trips when I was 15 years old, one of our co-passengers was a young man of about 22 years who had just begun working. He got talking to us and mentioned how his first job was so exciting and how he loved living in a different city learning to manage on his own. I was so fascinated by his experiences and I remember mentioning that I couldn’t wait to be an adult. He laughed loudly and asked me, “What do you think will happen when you become an adult?”

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“Independence,” I answered. “I can’t wait to complete my education and step into the world on my own.”

Subsequently, I experienced that freedom to travel solo, do my own thing like joining a meditation retreat, while still in college. Now that I was almost an adult, I told myself, I should deal with my own emotional baggage and not lean on the elders for support. I saw childhood as a period of dependence and looked at adulthood as a discrete period of absolute independence, little knowing that life can’t work in these extremes and as result I over glorified this stage of life. By the time I was 22-23 years old and started my first job, I began to see how life unfolds and recognized that whether it’s love or work, all of it works within an ecosystem. Whether it’s presence of people in our life, or any simple event that holds the possibility of impacting us and changing the entire course of our life. While we may believe that we are independent, we are constantly getting shaped by these influences around us. Gradually, I discovered the joy of inter-dependence. A recognition that as social beings we all benefit from social soothing and social interdependence.

Unlike the millennials or the older generation, GenZ seem to have learnt early on that emotional vulnerability is a sign of strength and that it helps to reach out to people in case of any issue. At the same time social media has become a trap for seeking validation, sometimes even leading to dependency on strangers for that validation. The pandemic aggravated this tendency. We got better at using social media and started talking about important matters on various platforms but in our personal life we stopped connecting as much. As a therapist I wonder whether that’s the chief reason loneliness tops the list of concerns that clients reach out for.

While our school life for years taught us about interdependence that exists when it comes to nature and our ecosystem, a huge part of adulting is us figuring this on our own, in our own time and sometimes by navigating the extremes. We learn our lessons, not just by others telling us but when we experience the reality ourselves.

I have come to see adulthood as a dance where we need to self-soothe, but there are moments where we need to depend on others and reach out. While the independence that comes with adulthood feels great, it’s inter-dependence that serves as an anchor, allowing us to dream bigger, take courageous decisions well-knowing that the scaffolding exists, if and when we fall.