The Social NetWorker

Self-Reliance: Creativity, Ingenuity, Growth

(This is a guest post by Megan Elizabeth Morris.)

Well... When do we depend on ourselves?

This is a question I asked myself over and over as I became better at my self-employment schtick, year after year. "How long am I going to wait for someone else to save me," I kept asking myself, "before I'm willing to step in and rescue myself?" It was my way of asking how much I was depending on the system, and how much I could depend solely on my own creativity and knowledge and innovation to get me through the rest of my life.

"At what point do I stop looking to the system," I asked, "or to one client, or even family or friends, to just happen by and solve problems for me? I'm the one who needs to solve my problems. Me."

And I was right. I'm really the only one who can help me survive -- the only one who can build myself up, teach myself, and grow. The system may help me along in a lot of incredibly convenient ways, but it doesn't really know what I need to become something amazing -- it only knows what it was programmed to know, and it does what it was programmed to do. Something that can be helpful to most people; something average.

There will be times when I need help, but it's best to let those things happen when they happen. The help will be more available (and more of a blessing) if I only draw on it when I really do need it. Not when I'm just used to having help. Not when I'm being lazy, not when I'm just plain not trying hard enough.

This is what I see all around me, all the time. And it's why self-reliance as a concept (even when it's for a hardcore five days in the wilderness at Burning Flipside) resonates so powerfully with me on a fundamental level. How many of us look deep inside ourselves to see what we're made of? How many of us seek to depend on our own ingenuity to get us by, instead of fudging it because we don't really have to try?

It's not just about the doomsday question -- what would we do if all our social systems simply fell apart? It's about our ability to grow and create as people. It's about the kind of power and skill we can tap into if we know what we're looking for and push ourselves. It's about the potential that we leave lying in the corridor when we walk into the TV room (the TV room! The room that's all about the TV! What on earth is a TV, anyway?) and flop down on the couch and give up our responsibility to some other entity, some school or workplace or system or government. It's about knowing what we're worth, and using our incredible selves to make something extraordinary. Make some change, make some construct, make something grow, make something different.

We don't do these things when we're taking the system for granted and depending on it endlessly to keep us going. We don't do these things when we're "getting along okay."

And I believe that we really, truly, must do them.

I believe that now is the time to make things happen, and personal power -- self-reliance and responsibility for ourselves -- is an important key.

Megan Elizabeth Morris (email)
Ms. Morris writes at Personal Revelations of the Magnificent Megan M. Megan Elizabeth Morris, or The Magnificent Megan M., [proper noun]: Superhuman font of knowledge, skill, determination & resourcefulness. Exudes enzymes that cause others to surpass their potential. Master thinker; writes, designs, manages, ideastorms, markets, inspires, connects, grows, teaches, makes things happen, changes the world, and throws a mean right hook. (Okay. Not the last one. Well! Not literally.)