Beyond Success and Failure: Ways to Self-Reliance and Maturity

Children need to depend on the knowledge of authorities, such as parents and guardians and teachers, over the course of their development. In order to mature, however, they have to shed their attachments at appropriate stages in their lives.

Every individual has the potential to grow or decay. When people are at their healthiest, they are independent, competent, and compassionate. They can adapt to the circumstances around them, learn from their mistakes, and know when to let go of their worries. By following their “inner gleam,” (as Emerson put it) they can discover their meanings, values, and beliefs.

Yet when people compare themselves to others, they activate their “infantile acquisitiveness” (Beecher 24). They desire what they do not have rather than being happy with what they do have. They complain and blame, unsatisfied with their circumstances. They always want more, which is never enough to satisfy them. At the root of their mentalities, they feel a deep sense of hollowness and unfulfillment.

Those who allow others to lean on them lean back as well. They create a mutual “admiration society,” where they feel needed, or superior, when others are dependent on them, but not when those same individuals are capable of living for themselves (Beecher 25). While they may exploit others for their own personal gain, they still do not feel whole. Behind all their behavior, their “need to be needed” stems from childish dependency.

Those who seek outside themselves for validation, for a life direction, only degrade themselves.

Free individuals don’t need to lean on others for their personal worth. They don’t need anybody to lean on them either. To be free is to confront the present moment, dealing with things as they are. Rather than hoping for some idealized state that may never come, they play with what they can control, while not worrying too much about the conditions outside their control.

Dependent people do not listen to their inner voices. Influences from outside themselves, such as parents and friends and teachers and celebrities and news programs and political parties and gurus, are their first authorities. They value (but may come to resent) those external sources.

Conformists are subordinate to authorities outside themselves. Other people dictate how they should live.

Then there are the negative conformists. They are contrary, obstructing others, out of reaction. They resist what’s outside themselves (because it comes from the outside) and resent being told what to do.

While the free person can let go of their attachments, those who resist others, who rebel for the sake of rebellion, only cling harder to their own suffering.

When people are dependent, they passively move through life. Freedom, on the other hand, comes from engagement.

Free people make mistakes and grow from them, while finding opportunities in challenges. Rather than hiding from the truth, they grapple with it. They play with it. They find joy in the game:

Their transition from childhood to adult life is not a stormy series of defeats and struggles against outside authorities. It is a quiet growth in self-confidence in which they learn that there are few irremediable mistakes, and they regard a mistake as nothing more than a friendly invitation to keep trying — not a loss of love, approval and prestige, or as a humiliation to be avoided at any cost. (Beecher 33)

Dependent people live for external validation, not for inner truth. They react to the outside world, conditioned to obey or rebel. Because they are unsatisfied with their lives, and don’t know what they want, they follow the worn paths of others.

Conformists not only follow the same accepted routines at work and school. Most of their lives are chosen for them. They attend clubs, churches, and parties. They aimlessly scroll through the internet and watch the trendiest shows on television. Rather than listening to their values, they are blindly acting out their roles until they reach the undertaker. They try to be good or bad out of a desire for social rewards and attention.

Like puppies that want to be petted, they perform their owner’s favorite tricks.

People can’t rejoice in their inner resources, or form genuine relationships with others, until they free themselves from their childish attitudes. They not only have to leave behind their enslaved habits from childhood, but they must live in the here-and-now.

Mature people are free from the competitive mindset. Immature people are always trying to one-up each other, proving themselves out of insecurity.

Mature individuals don’t need to look outside themselves for a master. Those who are dependent, who compete with everyone over everything, endlessly struggle to maintain their dominance. They never want to appear weak or inferior or vulnerable. Free people can live and let live:

Like a good card player who does not care what cards are dealt him since his fun lies in the free play he improvises in the playing of each hand. Each game is its own reward and he seeks nothing outside of the unfolding of each hand as it is played into the hands of others. He enjoys the whole experience and all that his partners do as well. (Beecher 37)

Mature individuals are adaptable and spontaneous. They want to explore. They are curious about the mysteries of the universe. When work has to be done, they press on with quiet persistence, not complaining about their given state.

While dependent people have the need to please others, free people satisfy the needs of their own lives first. Their job is not to obey the desires of others.

Those who are subservient to the values of the group are afraid of productivity. They don’t want to work on themselves. Putting the group’s needs first leads them to unfulfillment, degrading their growth:

Aloneness is freedom-from-dependence! Loneliness, on the other hand, is the dependent child crying as it searches for the parent or baby sitter it has lost and cannot find. (Beecher 41)

It doesn’t matter if an individual prefers solitude or the company of others. Those who are free, who are living fully, find meaning in the present moment. They don’t feel the urge to compete, dominate, or prove their value to anyone else. Their goal is to learn and see what happens.

Mature people don’t rely on outside authorities to determine who they are or what they are worth. If they have to remain apart from the harmful aspects of other people, then they will accept that outcome.

Without any wishful thinking or self-judgment, they know how to honor their “inner gleam.”

In the true spirit of agape, mature people don’t need to take, condemn, and blame. There are no favorites that they have to choose between. They are not caught up in a vicious hierarchy of who is superior or inferior, based on who gives and gets the most:

The mature adult finds no need to beg. He is an explorer and a doer. He does not have to compete and aspire to be the favored one. Only the child or the infantile adult has to worry about his status in the eyes of those around him. (Beecher 97)

Most importantly, free individuals are doers. Their actions are consistent with their words. Alfred Adler once advised to watch only movement. To learn who people are, do not form expectations about them based on their beautiful words and promises, but rather, look at their deeds alone.

It is easy to blame and judge. To seek out a balance, to playfully adapt to changing circumstances, to let go of expectations, may seem challenging at times, but it is worthwhile.

When people are themselves, they don’t need to prove anything to anyone. They don’t have to compare.

But when they seek the attention of outside authorities, they become stuck on an eternal treadmill, chasing after what they can never catch.