You Can't Do It Alone

By Scott Coulter I remember the summer of my sixteenth year. I was still fairly new to diabetes (having been diagnosed with Type 1 at 15), but it had been with me long enough to sink in — there was no longer any part of my brain convinced that I would wake up one day and find out this whole diabetes thing was just a dream. Living with diabetes for the rest of my life was a reality. And while the day-to-day maintenance wasn't overwhelming to me, there was a persistent thought that drove me absolutely up the wall. It was the notion that I was no longer "independent." I was now tied to insulin. I was tied to medical care. I was tied to an entire modern infrastructure of manufacturing and technology, without which I could not be alive. For a teenager, such thoughts were simply infuriating. Never mind that NONE of my friends could survive without modern supports — thrown into the wilderness, it's doubtful that any of us would make it very long. But it was the IDEA that drove me so crazy, this idea of dependence. As I have grown older, I've let go of this need to be fundamentally independent. In fact, on an intellectual level, I have come to embrace the notion that interdependence is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Independence is a myth. Nothing exists independent of the world around it. Science has given us the theory of relativity. Buddhism has given us the law of interdependence. We are all part of an interconnected web, and not a single one of us can...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs