Insight Out

Dependency and connection

By Mei Lan

“When you feel energy flowing towards something, it actually is feeling love for it. The moment you give in to that love, you connect your own destiny with that something. Once your destiny is connected to it, you depend on it, so you are dependent.”
This was the answer of one of my clients to the question “What are you afraid of?”

During my coaching sessions I take notes and sometimes I reflect the words back to my client.
While my client said the above, I wrote down:
“Love = connection
Connection = dependency”

When I saw the words written like that, the insight slowly sunk in for me.

Dependency has been a huge theme for me, since I became blind 15 years ago.
I did literally everything I could think of to prove my INdependency despite my blindness, because the worst that I thought could happen to me was to be depending on others.
“If I depend on others, I’m not free. Then I don’t have control. then I won’t be able to be myself.”
This conviction has served me very well for several years. It brought me to other continents all by myself to study abroad. It made me survive in the jungle of Brussels metro network and it made me gain a bunch of skills that I’m still proud of.
It turned me in to a strong, independent young blind woman.
Score! That’s in the pocket!

After I gained all of this profit out of this conviction, I didn’t quit living by having to prove myself.
I was still convinced that dependence would kill my freedom. I was afraid to truly connect; a classic!

When I returned to Belgium three years ago, after several adventures abroad, I started renting an apartment, bought a new bed and a closet.
I lost myself completely in panic the moment I realised that I had a fixed place to stay that I couldn’t leave within a month and that I had 2 pieces of furniture that I couldn’t fit into a backpack.
Help! I am not independent anymore! Help! I connected myself with a place.
Even bigger became the panic when I had to admit that I really liked the town where I was living, I might not want to leave again.
I also discovered the luxury of living somewhere long term; knowing my way around as a blind person without having to ask for help all the time. Living my street with my white cane to go to the corner store, the doctor or the train station isn’t a big effort or adventure, but just normal, because I know the place really well.
I started to feel at ease.
Red alert! I am feeling at ease!
Now all of a sudden all new places will feel scary and not at ease!
Help! I am feeling at home here. I might not want to go anywhere else anymore!
Panic; I am stuck!

Today, I can have a good laugh about it, yet it costed me a great effort and a couple of heavy practices to transform my relationship to dependency.

As coach I invite my clients to pick challenges for themselves that are 20% outside of their comfort zone. This is not something you can truly measure, but you feel it intuitively.
5% is too easy and hardly exciting. 50% is that nerve wrecking that you’d rather stay in bed, cover your head with your pillow and hide until it has passed or simply quit.
20% is the sweet spot in the middle of those. You know it will be scary and you have equal amount of power available to make it happen anyway.

My 20% stretch outside of my comfort zone when it came to allowing dependency in my life, was to not make it black or white.
Every moment is a new choice.

Today I can simply choose to enjoy being at ease in my neighbourhood and feel safe walking to the local supermarket where they know me and help me out.
And if I feel restless and nervous tomorrow that I hardly leave my street, I have all power and freedom to decide to go on a new adventure and jump on a surf board somewhere across the ocean.

There is really not such a thing as a permanent choice. Every new moment invites us to choose again and again. And this gives great freedom.

So, panic and fear to get stuck are fully welcome. They are my guides to see when it is time again to spread my wings once more and enjoy the unknown again, just for a while.
Fear is my friend, that I keep as a friend by every now and then listening to what he has to say. And by asking him sometimes, in a loving yet clear way, to just shut up for a while as well.

The moment I allowed the freedom of choice from moment to moment, something else became clear.
The summary of what my client said in that session, shows it perfectly:
“Love = connection
Connection = dependency”
The old me saw this as the most valid reason to minimise connection, because it makes you depend too much on others, that was dangerous.

My search for balance and freedom of choice in every moment gave me already magical moments.
Being blind forces me to fully connect anywhere I go with the people around me. I have to ask for help and I have to talk to people where ever I am, simply because I don’t see them.
I am forced to open up, embrace connection and thus embrace dependency.

So, now, I can turn it around:
“Dependency = connection
connection = love”