Morrie's Dependency

Although from the surface it may seem as though Americans are afraid of being too dependent on one another, just as Morrie said, "There is nothing innately shameful about being dependent. When we were infants we needed others to live, when we are dying we need others to live, but here's the secret - in between we need others even more." What Americans truly fear is physical dependency, not emotional dependency. We fear death and we fear approaching death because the approach towards death is one where the factor of physically dependency regresses back into childhood where the only way to live is from reliance on others. Emotionally, however, we are extremely dependent on one another. We depend on our families and relationships for love. This is not a bad thing, though. In the grand scheme of things, everyone needs one another from the moment we are born. In most societies, however, we try so hard to stray away from this dependency. We want to be able to live for ourselves and not for others, but the further we try and stay away from it, the worse off we are. Dependency can have negative results such as the pain after broken trust; however, there is a reason we strive so hardly for love. We want to love, but love, in itself, is a dependency on another person. Although Americans want to stay independent, we need each other more than ever.