We humans are a social species. We weren’t meant to survive or thrive on our own. Unfortunately, we (especially Americans) have created mythic heroes that are rugged individualists. They don’t need anybody. It’s a lonely life.
Those of us who live with illness can’t survive that fiction. We need people to take care of us. I often feel embarrassed about the amount of help I need. I am learning to reframe what I have, in the past, seeen as weakness. When I ask for help, I am inviting relationship. I am weaving community.
The truth is we are each week and strong. In community, we each bring our gifts and needs to the table. Where I am strong, I help you and where you are strong, you help me. No embarrassment necessary. No assumptions of superiority and inferiority. We are just traveling together.
What would happen if I lived as though this were true? It’s not the way the world is, but perhaps it’s the way the world could be. One of my favorite lines is (from form myth Buster, Adam Savage) “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” What if I lived in this imaginary utopia? With other people join me? Perhaps it’s worth an experiment…