Our baby still hasn’t learned how to worry. This is a concern for me. It’s now been over a week since she was born and still there isn’t even the slightest shadow of imagined calamity upon her brow. I feel I’ve failed her as a parent. Despite my best attempts at modelling creative negative thinking and fearful over-activity she seems completely at ease and only pauses from her slumber to feed and request a clean nappy.
How can a baby know contentment and peace of mind? She’s one of the most vulnerable organisms on the planet. Without constant support and supervision for the next few years she is doomed. It must be ignorance that allows her such serenity; she simply doesn’t know how vulnerable she is. If she did surely she’d be as unbalanced as I am.
We can’t afford to be ignorant of our vulnerability. We know that if we lie around all day we and our loved ones will experience lack. Furthermore we will experience the ultimate humiliation of being known as a lazy sponger. I reckon one of our greatest fears as men is the fear of being dependent. So it’s mission time, it’s job, car, gym, pension, DIY, qualifications, business and investment portfolio time. We are the only person that will provide for us and our family for the rest of our lives and we’d better not forget it, not even to sleep, certainly not to play. That way we’ll be safe. Miserable, unpleasant and ill, but safe. Safe from what?
I think that what the baby has over us is a realistic assessment of its dependence. A baby is entirely dependent on others and it knows it. We are almost as dependent on others yet forget it / prefer to deny it. We react to the idea of our dependence as a heresy against our adult maleness. Real men succeed in business, give to the needy, destroy all the baddies, save the world, get the girl and know where the fridge is. I think we might have missed the middle ground.
A baby is totally dependent. God is totally independent. We’re somewhere in between.
While we’re encouraged to think that the less help we receive the richer and more admirable we are I think it may be almost the other way round. Our notion of safety is messed up. Attempts at independence are attempts at protecting our self from others – their weaknesses and failings but who says they are any weaker than us and what about all their riches? What about their strengths and talents, especially the ones we don’t have? - We’re also protecting ourselves from them.
I enjoy some tremendous recreational partnerships. The best ones are where everybody concerned knows they are dependent on the others in the group and vice-versa. This is interdependence and its how things become really juicy. Everyone brings something to the table that the others don’t have: equipment, transport, accommodation, anchovies, local knowledge of minefields, technical skills, finance, a particular crude anecdote, a long pointed stick… These excursions are invariably lots of fun and result in a sense of ease and gratitude.
Being childlike is to accept and enjoy our dependence on others and trust them to provide for our needs. Being childlike is very counter-cultural.
Being childish is to neglect those who depend on us and expect others to provide for our desires. Being childish is very cultural indeed.
Ironically it’s often our attempts at being grown up and independent that make us most childish. There is much to be said for focussed tenacity but I know climbers who will choose to spend several weeks in a tent below a chosen route stoically waiting until conditions are right just to save themselves the price of a local guide; who could on any of those days have led them in rewarding activity to suit their aspirations and the prevailing conditions. One of the reasons they’re willing to pay such a high price (in time and anguish) is because to hire a guide would be to admit dependence on another and this in some way would make them a lesser climber. I think this may be a little childish.
I was chatting to a guide working in Chamonix. I asked him about his work and was struck by how much he enjoyed it. I wanted to employ him because I realised doing so wasn’t an admission of dependence but a celebration of interdependence – he depended on me for his climbing as much as I did for mine.
- On whom do you depend? How do you feel about that?
- What stops you from depending on other people in an enriching way and what could you do to overcome these obstacles?
- On whom could you depend and what difference would this make to your recreation?
- How good are you @ receiving?
- How much effort are you putting into being independent? What are you losing out on as a result?
- How much effort are you putting into being interdependent? What have you gained from doing so? What have others gained from you doing so?
Let’s be childlike.
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