7: On Self-Reliance

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I

The day after Cliff spoke with the photo sharers, he returned to the marketplace and found a traveling show, the purpose of which was to express self-reliance.  Cliff walked into the marketplace and watched the remainder of the show.  Its message clearly praised self-reliance.  When the actors left the stage, Cliff took their place and began to speak.

“Friends, do not let these actors share with you the key to self-reliance.  Through them that sacred art becomes a watered-down cliche, a background truth: something you hold as good and true, but do not act on.

This is common among shows today, I've seen, they preach the means to self-reliance and thus remove the ‘self’ from the phrase and replace it with “Us”.  They pose as the means and erect themselves as the end.  They muddle the meaning of and means to independence.  One relies on their formula to independence rather than on oneself.

Do not trust easy means to self-reliance.  The more wide-spread the idea of independence becomes, the more difficult it is to actually achieve.  As the idea spreads, so does the idea of a means to it.  Detailing the means to self-reliance becomes a communal venture, and thus ceases to be self-reliance.  The aim of making it a communal venture is to give the crowd the impression that they are independent, but they remain dependent on this impression.”

Some of the audience stood up and began to leave, some of them explained that they have already achieved independence and thus don't need to listen to Cliff.  Some of the audience stayed with skepticism and curiosity.

“Do not mind the ones who leave, my words clearly are not for them.

For the rest of you, ask yourself this before you stay to listen:

Is self-reliance for you?

For many it is unproductive self torture, but for a few it is a necessity.  It has always been a necessity to them and they know this.  The few before me who know this need, you know my words are to you.  You have maintained your position as your own harshest critic and sweetest admirer.  You have slept through the night with want of a partner, but a need to resist.  You have walked through the day content in your loneliness.  You have never understood the question: ‘Doesn't it get lonely?’

Through self-reliance, one sifts for a glazed golden nugget of solitude, locks this precious stone up, and holds it as their own.  This can be cause for envy: deep in their bones, even the dependent see the worth of that precious stone.  Thus they say: ‘You must be lonely’ or ‘I too enjoy my alone time.’  In the case of the latter, what they refer to is a short break from the crowd to which they maintain their allegiance.  What they call ‘alone time’ would be still too much dependence for you to bear.  And if they should wander and accidentally stumble across a gold piece of solitude like your own, they become pale and run backwards at full speed, they double down their belonging to the crowd and all things surface.  But to disguise the feeling that they've become cowardly and retreated, they convince themselves further of their illusory independence and maintain that poor pyrite is no different from your glistening gold.

Regarding these shows that teach cheap self-reliance: remember, you gold miners, that a gold rush always means more miners than gold.  The best mining is done alone.”

II

Much of the crowd had gone by now and of the few that remained, one approached Cliff reverently and asked:

“Cliff, what you say is true!  But I have a question for you.  How can I know if I’m fit for self-reliance as you teach it?  How can I know for certain that I’m not walking into danger, or sifting for some cheap old stone?”

“Young man, if you have to ask such questions, you are not fit for independence.  Do not attempt it, you will surely perish.  And even now, I know your mind runs side to side attempting to disprove me or erase that you ever asked such a question, but do not give in to that disproving or that erasing.

Do you know what will happen to you?  No you don't!  If you attempt self-reliance without being suited for it, you will become unnecessarily cold to all and to everything.  Your coldness you will call self-reliance.  You will feel people love you, but you will deny yourself to them from your imagined need to preserve yourself.  Some need people above and alongside them: so accept and be grateful that you have people above and alongside you. 

I bid you,  young man of uncertainty, run from self-reliance!”