Dear Friends,
Back in 2015, a client of ours, attachment expert Diane Poole Heller, offered a reframe that has stuck with me ever since. What if we celebrated Interdependence Day on the 4th of July instead?
It’s a subtle shift. But as therapists, we know it’s not a small idea.
In the West, we live inside a culture of the rugged individual, the self-made man who conquers all alone. But the truth is we are highly shaped by our family, community and our environment.
Steve Jobs is often held up as the ultimate self-made genius. But Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley, surrounded by engineers from Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Lockheed. As a teenager, he joined HP’s Explorer Club. He met Steve Wozniak through a neighbor. Apple would not exist if Jobs grew up in say, the Midwest farm belt.
Or take the coffee you are sipping right now. Beans grown in mineral rich volcanic Costa Rican soil, centuries in the making. Picked by transient farmworkers from Panama and Nicaragua. Washed and processed by Costa Rican workers near San José.
Green beans are shipped across the Pacific Ocean and then unloaded by dock workers in Long Beach, CA then a truck driver delivers them across the country to your local shop for roasting.
You bring it home to brew, with a kettle made in China, CHEMEX® glass filter manufactured in Massachusetts, paper filters from a mill in Wisconsin, your mug made down the street by a local potter, and in my case, water from snow melt off the Rocky Mountains.
It literally takes thousands of hands to have that first sip of morning brew and let alone all the countless microorganisms supporting the soil and the bees needed for pollinating the coffee flower. Feel free to substitute tea or a grain of rice or that gluten-free bread. Same story.
We like to imagine ourselves as self-sufficient. The truth is closer to the opposite. Every one of us is held up, quite literally, by the generosity and skill of countless strangers.
From the heart level of our being, there’s another way to feel this, one that goes beyond the generous hands that made that excellent cup of coffee possible in the morning. This is probably best expressed by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher, poet, and peace activist, in his poem Call Me by My True Names. Here’s an excerpt:
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
It’s a hard poem to digest. It doesn’t let you stand outside anything, victim or perpetrator, us or them. No separation. If you haven’t read the full poem here’s a link: Call Me by My True Names.
Independence asks: how do I stand apart? What makes me above everyone else? To me, it’s a vertical, Empire Building shape.
Interdependence asks something more relational: a more horizontal shape of being vulnerable, and blessed, by all the direct and indirect relations around me?
That’s the invitation this week. Not just to feel grateful for your coffee, but to notice how much of what troubles you in the world, and what sustains you, runs through you too.
With warmth,
Brian Spielmann
P.S. If this kind of reflection is nourishing to you, our free Academy of Therapy Wisdom Network is a good place to keep exploring it, alongside others doing the same inner work. [Join us here »]
What you´ll learn:
- Vestibular Engagement for Emotional Regulation
- Using the Eyes to Hack the Stress Response System
- Subtle Sounds to Release the Peri-Trauma Response
- Effective Self-Holding and Self-Swaddling Techniques
- How and When to Apply Bilateral Stimulation
- Integration and Completing the Stress Response Cycle
