News from DAC NEW, By Erin Ferrier
Mister Rogers would end every show with the same quote, “You always make each day a special day. You know how: By just your
being you. There’s only one person in the whole world that’s like you, and that’s you. And people can like you just exactly the way you are.”
Being who you are is easier said than done. There are so many spoken and unspoken expectations, so many rules and various codes that being able to just be you can be hard. Poet E.E. Cummings wrote about the ongoing battle to be oneself in a world “doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else”.
Just being yourself feels like an act of rebellion against a world full of influencers, unrealistic and unreasonable demands, and this insistence that we all should conform while also pushing this idea of rugged individualism. When you stop and think about it, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Humans are social creatures. We yearn to belong. Belonging helps with survival. But what happens when we feel we don’t belong? How far will a person go to belong? How much of themselves will they be willing to erase or hide away just to fit in?
In the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there is a concept known as the Entropy Paradox. When this paradox is applied to humans, the idea is that as we attempt to remove visible signs of disorder, we create deeper, more systemic forms of it.
We, as humans, tend to fight nature’s laws to create a form of conformity that is then pushed onto the population as an agreed upon standard of being. Unfortunately, this only amplifies the chaos we meant to eliminate. This leads to a lot of people within the afore-mentioned population believing they need to change who they are to fit into the conformity pushed on to them which further results in chaos within the person who feels forced to conform.
In other words, depression, anxiety, unhappiness, feeling of being trapped, having needs not met as well as feeling ignored, dismissed, erased, and silenced. There is a whole lot of traumas happening within this paradox to a wide range of people. This has been going on for so long that this paradox has become part of accepted culture. We are hurting ourselves and others by insisting that this paradox that we live in should be the way we all should live. This is not healthy.
Humans are known as agents of entropy. Human connections and personal habits are vulnerable to entropy. Dickran Guerguerian states, “The moments of “disentropy, ”the miracles that defy chaos, are moments of grace—pockets of hope where life asserts itself against the overwhelming tide of disorder.”
Interdependence resists entropy by continually investing energy to build and sustain connections. There is a common misconception that “independent living” means total isolation and self-sufficiency. This is not true.
The Independent Living Philosophy promotes autonomy and self-determination. This means you have the right to choose who assists you, where you live, and how you participate in society. Pioneers like Ed Roberts established that people with disabilities are the leading experts on their own lives. Autonomy is made possible by relying on community. At its core, the Independent Living Philosophy is about interdependence and connections, not isolation.
If you are interested in learning more about the Independent Living Movement or would like assistance, please reach out to DAC NEW at (509) 606-4639.
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