"All by myself!" Independent versus dependent

I took my daughter to the park last week, which these days means we head right to the swings.

Just as we started swinging ("Higher! Higher!") the swing next to us opened up and a mother moved to hoist her (I'm guessing) three-year old son up to the seat. These swings, I should mention, are oddly high (as I've found to be the case in NYC parks) and between the height and the heft of her kiddo this mom just wasn't going to be able to lift him up and into the seat. After waiting a respectable amount of time, I offered to help. She was ambivalent--"Oh, I don't know, urrr... I've been... I've been trying to do things by myself," she shared, maybe revealing a bit more in her frustration than she'd planned on.

"I understand," I replied, "I get that. It's just that they hang these things so darned high." She smiled a bit and laughed in a way that said she would, in fact, accept the offer. I hoisted her little guy up and went back to pushing my own kid.

"All by myself!"

If you have or have ever had a toddler, or met a toddler, really, you know this phrase all too well. That kid on the swings (mine, I mean) says it just about all the time. I like it, or at least in part like it. It's cool watching her learn to do things on her own--to see how proud she is to take on something new. At other times, she'll say "I need help" and I love hearing that, too. There are tons of things she can't do, that any of us can't do.

The reality is that most of us can't do most things. Really. I am handy with a hammer and nail, I speak enough Spanish to find the bus station in Barcelona and I know my way around my smart phone but I can't install a furnace, there are hundreds of languages I don't speak and I don't know a thing about programming computers. None of this is a problem because I rely every day on thousands of other people who can. Absolutely no one is doing it "all by myself."

I wrote about this a few years ago in responds to a TED talk about a guy who decided to build a toaster, from scratch--mining the material, forming the molds. It's a fascinating display of just how socially dependent we are.

Independent versus dependent: Breaking the dichotomy

Why does it have to be one or the other? Part of the problem is embedded in how we use the language: The two ideas are constructed, linguistically, as opposites. But what we mean to convey in our use of each are two very different concepts. Independence implies, to me, taking charge of our lives, taking responsibility for the things that are important to use (like our children) and making sure things that are within our purview get done. Dependence in some usage implies the opposite, yes: Being lazy and overly reliant on others. But there's a different sense of dependence that has a great deal of value--recognizing our interdependence, depending on others (like a kind stranger in the park). They go together more than they contradict.

I like the project that mom at the park has taken on. She wants to learn how to do things on her own and pass that on to her child. I could only guess what's contributed to her taking that on, but it seems worthwhile. But I'm glad she let me help.