As I read Chapter 9 - Declaring Interdependence - of Rabbi Dayle Friedman's every-adult-should-read Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older, found myself thinking of my sister, Mim, of how she always held herself to be fiercely independent, how that was how the family saw her - and my oldest brother - throughout my life. I opened my post on the chapter by describing how, from my mid twenties, she reminded me of the illustration that opens Rudyard Kipling's, The Cat That Walks By Himself.
As I wrote about Mim, "She was like the semi-feral cat that lets you stroke it – when it likes – and feed it – when it likes – and let it into the house on a nasty night, but who always makes it clear that there are no mutual obligations, that when it’s ready to be gone, gone it will be, without a backward glance or a nano second thought."
Here's the thing - acting like she could take you or leave you is not the same as being independent, something my parents never seemed to figure out. Both Mom & Dad seemed mightily impressed & rather awed by Peter & Mim's "independence." They were challenged at seeing the difference between letting people know you don't give a darn about them & actual independence.
Peter still sees himself as the personification of independent wheeler dealer. The place where he lives is moving long-term residents to the 2nd floor, to quarters which he considers inferior to his present digs. He informed them that the signed agreement allowed him to stay in his preferred room & he was holding them to the bargain. He was not moving. They offered him another, even nicer room on his preferred floor. No - he was not moving. They offered him a single room, all to himself. NO! They offered him a room facing the woods instead of the parking lot. NO! They offered him a better television & a more spacious bureau. He agreed. When he told me this tale, he was proud of holding firm, squeezing out concession after concession.
Yes, he got what he wanted, but at the price of - as he acknowledged - getting their backs up. I'd say that seemed the cherry on the top for him - knowing he'd caused others' aggravation. I consider that sort of behavior ungracious & uncivil, a far cry from independence. And the very opposite of what I consider the ultimate civil state between people - interdependence.
As much as they frustrated me, I was also aware that my sibs' "kiss the ring" behaviors were rooted in lack of confidence rather than extreme self-assurance. It was clearest in Mim, who worked with disadvantaged children, in part, because she found comfort in them being even more worse off than she was. An independent person would have tried to raise herself up rather than find others worse than she so as to alleviate her sense of... whatever. That is not an observation of mine - - Mim told me, flat out. Even at the time, some twenty of so years ago, it went straight to my heart, that my brilliant older sister COULD NOT see her own gifts & graces, rejected that others thought highly of her, respected & admired her.
Independence is NOT having a brilliant idea without doing anything to make it happen, nor is it trash talking people over a cup of coffee & piece of banana cream pie. That's contempt. And it's how I defined independence well up into my thirties because it was what was tagged that way by my parents & my sibs.
A blessing of writing posts is how often new clarity comes as thoughts swirl & jell. Contempt is the VERY word for what was labeled independence. "Do what we want or we will freeze you out." It was why Mom admitted she'd do ANYTHING if it allowed her to hold onto the thin slender thread of hope they'd deign to be part of her life.
Reality Check: For independence & jaw-dropping courage, look no further than my mother. For Mom to pick up the phone & call a psychologist & make an appointment, explaining, "I have no sense of who I am" took acting against her self-deflecting nature & entrenched self-denigrating nurture. It took independent thought, independent will & independent intent. She didn't set up the appointment to score brownie points with me (I no longer cared) & certainly not with my sibs. She did it knowing that the others might not be happy about her quest for a sense of her true self, the Katharine Reynolds Lockhart that Dad had always seen but was a stranger to herself. The thing that neither Pete nor Mim nor Mike nor Kerry could wrap their heads around was that Mom did it FOR HERSELF. She did it because she saw that I was feeling emotionally mangled & finally realized that no one else in the family - not Peter, not Mike, not Mim, not Kerry - was going to lift a finger to help.
When is independence NOT? When it is simply contempt - contempt of others possibly disguising contempt of self. When IS independence the real deal? When a person accepts his or her self as responsible for their own wholeness. When they act for their emotional, physical, spiritual good. When they move past that to acting to help others achieve the same, they've taken the leap from declaring their independence to celebrating interdependence with those around them, with & for a greater good.
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