MEMBER BLOG

Independence
Posted on Sunday, July 20 2008 @ 12:57:16 Eastern

So I've finished university. I've told certain GRians (for that is what you are known as once you taint this place with your essence... or it taints you) this fact already, in fact I've told one or two multiple times because this event has been staggered over several milestones. First came my last exam which was followed by my graduation ball and finally my graduation ceremony just a couple of days ago. If you really want to split things then I could say handing in my dissertation (bane of my god damn life for several months) was a stage of the end of my uni life too. This blog is less about university and more about what its absence heralds and I'm sure regular readers of my blog (I've mentioned you before, surely you exist now?) Many people (my parents included) have referred to it as entering the 'real world' and becoming independent but instead of having the desired effect of kicking me up the ass and making me find a job (though I have been looking) it's spurred me to contemplate on the meaning of 'independence'. This is a concept banded about a lot: it's good to be independent, dependency on anyone but yourself is a bad thing because people let you down, dependency=burden. But who is truly independent? Is it the person with a full time job supporting their family? This person is admirable to be sure but they still depend on their employer to pay their wages, they still depend on the shop to provide them with food and supplies, they still depend on water and gas companies to continue supplying their house. Their employer depends on continued business to keep money coming in and the owners of their shop depend on their supplies delivering the goods. Even the suppliers depend on their suppliers to allow them to keep creating their products. The farmers who grow crops depend on good weather and good soil to deliver a good crop and the ones who breed livestock still depend on these things so the livestock grow up to be healthy. Even plants depend on the sun to continue burning! Given this I would argue that no one is truly independent but rather we are all dependent on a sliding scale. Dependency is not necessarily a bad thing, more specifically it is required. There is no one person who can claim to be totally self sufficient unless relying on non-humans and inanimate objects doesn't count. The point is certain types of dependency are accepted by society; a child is dependent on its parents until at least the age of about 16 but a 26 year old child still dependent on its parents is rather different. Dependency is all around us from relying on the trains to be on time (fat chance) to relying on the doctors to treat us correctly (let's hope they've got this one down). What's the point of this blog? No point, and rest assured that I'll be writing a funny 'suck at their jobs' one straight after.