Interdependence

by Nancy Blair Moon

“I can't tell who I am unless someone is listening.” (John Powell)

If I am afraid to know my own dependency and vulnerability, even I am not listening. And if I cannot bring myself to speak of it, you cannot listen, for you cannot hear it. You can only guess. And if you must guess, I have placed a burden on both of us.

Can I be dependent enough to let you know that I rely on you? To tell you where I am without asking you to fix me? When you do that, you take away something I need. It makes me little and you big. Then I may have to fight you to be free. Just let me tell you that I'm only half way up this hill. Perhaps you can say you aren't much further — or you remember what it feels like to be half way up — or ask me for a report so you'll know what to expect.

There are many things we can take turns doing, or help each other do. If I let you fix me — even if you could — I have lost something and you have gained at my expense. If I think you can fix me, I have given away my power to you.

There's enough for all of us if we sit together in the Light. We don't have to fight over who gets it and who has to be without. When we sit together in the Light we know ourselves to be members of the family of Earth and of one another. We can each bring wood for the fire that warms us, each take turns telling our stories so we learn more and more from each other about what it means to be humans together.

Whatever I dislike in you I have hidden in myself. Whatever I admire is also there, when I am my whole self in the circle of whole selves.

Jack Kornfield says, “If we haven't learned to let go before we die, we get a crash course.”

Before then, I may be dependent on doctors, nurses, friends, family, strangers or even machines for my very life — as it was in the beginning. Honestly, as it has always been.

Marge Piercy says, “We seek not rest but Transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways.”