I Believe We Should All (Especially Women) Be Autonomous Rather Than Independent

Autonomous people (and especially women) impress me much more than independent ones. And I'll tell you why…..

I hear many people saying “ It’s not my problem that…. it’s his/her/their problem”.

Are you familiar with this? That your partner doesn’t understand your crazy love for yoga and gives you funny faces when you choose yoga rather than spending time with him at the weekend.

Or that your children don’t get your fascination with your new entrepreneurial idea and keep on telling you how it’s not going to work.

Or maybe that you do care whether there’s a nice and supportive atmosphere in your office but your colleague just can’t get it and why you’re so upset about it.

So someone doesn’t understand your choices, passions, quirkiness, needs, there’s a constant conflict or uneasiness in the air, and you end up saying “It’s not MY problem… It’s theirs”.

But what I really hear is: It is my problem, only I don’t know what to do about it!

We work hard to be independent in our thinking, in our ability to support ourselves financially, even in our emotional detachment from those we love (so we don’t get hurt) and in the process we might become defensive, somewhat sheltered or threatened by those who don’t understand us and our choices.

The thing is that being independent is the opposite of being dependent. It is a referential point of view in life. It is a fight to break free from something.

Being autonomous on the other hand is self-contained. It’s an ability to see the web of life and not be detached from it, seeing rather the interconnected and how we can be more wisely responsive.

I believe we should all strive to be autonomous, to open our hearts, because we’re not afraid our independent identity will get hurt when we receive or need help.

I feel we should all be autonomous so we can create friendships, relationships, from a place that doesn’t feel that it needs to fight for something but rather a space that needs to find the possible connecting point.

I would love for us all to be autonomous so we could live in a world of brilliant creativity sparked by the art of living wholly.

For the love of all free spirits