Independence

No. I am not referring to the BYU football team. And no I am not referring to the Day either. But both the aforementioned things can give us insight into what the word “independence” means. One thesaurus states that “freedom” is a synonym of independence. In the BYU football sense of the term, the team is free to play whatever team they want, whenever they want. But there is a little hitch to this freedom… there are still consequences to the actions of the football team (and no, I am not talking about the personal decisions of the football players, but the actions of the team as an organization). The team can’t just play Provo High every week, beat them by 100, and then go to the national championship every season (that little trick is reserved only for the SEC). BYU still has to schedule quality opponents every week and win in order to progress on the football totem poll (so I just realized I said I wasn’t referring to the BYU football team…and then I wrote this whole paragraph about the BYU football team. Sorry. All of my sentences can be considered independent of each other. They make their own decisions about what they are going to say…sort of). Now on to the meat. Let’s talk independence in the post high school sense.

Everyone has to go through the stage in life where they have to leave their parents. This event happens in all shapes and forms, whether gradually or abruptly, when you are 18 or when you are 30, etc, etc, etc. We are going to refer to it as the time when a young lad or lass moves out of their house (even though true independence probably comes earlier or later than that). In a lot of cases, leaving home is accompanied by a lot of joy. But sooner or later, every young adult realizes how comfortable (in most cases) home really was. An independent soul realizes that food doesn’t just appear on the table anymore, for example. This shock to the system takes a little bit to get used to.

In my experience, I have seen that people get more and more independent as time passes. They get past that initial food problem and figure out how to nourish their bodies more effectively. They begin to make their own day-to-day decisions without having to ask everyone and their dog’s opinion. They begin to develop their routine with school, work, social life, etc. Basically, they begin to not “depend” so much upon parents, or even other people.

But is there such as thing as becoming too independent? Well I know of some wise men that have said it is harder to get married as you get older because the marriage relationship requires a high level of unselfishness. Could it be harder to be unselfish with independence? I think it could be. Just some food for thought for those of you with hungry brains.

Tu amigo,

Chris