This morning, as I went for a walk around the neighborhood, I pondered how addicted I have felt to screens, the internet, online chat, text messaging, and a whole host of other media streaming. I started to reflect on how I have struggled with my business and personal relationships. I started to wonder if what I have been doing has been negatively affecting my life (funny enough, I try to say nothing is negative or positive, it just is–maybe it’s both negative and positive at the same time, some quantum physics applied to Buddhism).
I then thought about business, and how I have been so hesitant to make people addicted to my products. I intentionally built iFeelio to not be addictive. I wanted people to look at each other more than looking at their phones. I guess I wanted people to be addicted to each other more than to their devices. Hm. Anyways, I didn’t put in random notifications, I didn’t put in game mechanics so people could “level up”, I didn’t put in a social component so that peer pressure would push people to continue to use it. I avoided the addiction trap.
I’m doing it with the classes that I run. I charge people upfront instead of giving them a free trial. I don’t tell too many people about it. I package it in a way where people aren’t incentivized to peer pressure their friends. The classes are supposed to teach people how to teach themselves, so that they won’t need the classes. They won’t need me. They won’t be dependent on me.
And here’s the crux–in pushing so hard for people to not be dependent on me, they’re not. And it’s really hard to pay off your own dependencies (rent, phone, food, etc.) when people aren’t dependent on you. Wow, side note, I put phone before food–that’s a whole different conversation. I think I have spent a large majority of my life trying to become as independent as possible. In the process, I forget that it is completely impossible to be independent.
This universe seems completely dependent. Everything affects everything. At a very basic level, I am completely dependent on eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing. A few weeks without eating and I’m dead. A few days without water and I’m dead. A few days without sleep, and I’m dead. A few MINUTES without air and I’m dead. Expand this and I realize that human beings are incredibly social (aka dependent) beings. We can’t survive alone. But we also can’t survive without other elements of the earth. Bees disappear and we’re pretty screwed.
Maybe dependency isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s just another word for attachment. Maybe a way to protect ourselves from the inevitable detachment is to never attach in the first place. If I never depend on anyone, then I can’t be betrayed. As I learned from George Kohlrieser, we must go through grief if we are to attach again. We must grieve to get back to the joy of living.
If we don’t depend on anything, and nobody depends on us, then we coast through a life of numbness, never experiencing the highs of complete and utter bonding, and never experiencing the lows of complete and utter detachment.
Whew. That was a long one. Hope you read some of it. If not, that’s OK, too =J