Everything I am, I get from others. My body is millions, billions of lives great and small lending me their energy, life making my own. My mind is hundreds of ideas I've made out of thousands I didn't. Even my soul, the path I walk, my inherent direction, is something that existed before the person following it. Losing your ego doesn't make you nothing, it makes you everything.
It shouldn't surprise me, then, to realize that my personality is a synthesis of people I've met; that it is only by knowing strong, wise, good people, and mimicking them, that I've actually become at all strong, wise, or good. These are things learned. It can nevertheless be galling, socialized as we are to feel individualistic and independent of others. "Be yourself," "Think for yourself," etc., admirable though they may be in their intent, presuppose an extant and fully developed self to be; hearing such tripe as children, it's no wonder we become so confused. If one were to truly disregard all outside influence from birth, parents included, there would be nothing of humanity about them; a baby left to its own devices will grow into nothing more than an unusually intelligent and adaptable animal. The human spirit as we've developed it throughout our cultural development would disappear in a generation if no one were there to pass it on.
Where, then, does this value for independence come from?
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