Vacate

Exactly four years ago, I wrote about going on vacation. At the time, I had recently started my job at Homeland and had made a few other significant changes to my life. In fact, it was not too long after I started this blog. As with most memories, it feels like yesterday and an eon ago simultaneously. I guess that averages out to four years. And so, I sit again, thinking about change and vacation.

Vacation, I said, was not only a chance to grow and change for the traveler, but a chance for those at home to grow and change. Loved ones grow to miss you, but also grow to be more self-reliant. At the time, I wrote, rather unquestioningly, that this was a positive thing, mainly because it mixes things up and makes people more interesting.

Upon reflection, it seems odd I was so certain. After all, Cheap Trick sang “I want you to want me; I need you to need me.” It saddens us when our friends don’t call us or our exes get over us. We want to be missed and we want to feel needed. It’s why some parents become overprotective, why some workers never take vacations and why some people take on pets.

In the first season of Friends, Phoebe dates Fisher Stevens. He makes the following overly-apt remark about the titular characters:

“Actually it's, it's quite, y'know, typical behavior when you have this kind of dysfunctional group dynamic. Y'know, this kind of co-dependant, emotionally stunted, sitting in your stupid coffee house with your stupid big cups which, I'm sorry, might as well have nipples on them, and you're like all 'Oh, define me! Define me! Love me, I need love!'.”

It should be noted that Fisher Stevens was criticized as being “creepy” and eventually dumped by Phoebe. Ironically, as the show progressed, the other characters became creepy as they were still in this “co-dependant, emotional stunted” arrangement for a decade. In the end, Friends became boring and stagnant and was cancelled.

On the other side of things, over-independence strikes us oddly as well. Hearing about my friend’s Dominic’s entry into an English boarding school at seven and his very distant relationship with his family was grating. And I will never fully understand my friend Cory, who has been through so much, but never speaks a peep of it. They are two of the most fascinating, independent adventurers I have ever met. Yet, it always seems that in no way do they need me, which I always felt was a hindrance to our friendship.

So, I guess I must conclude that, as with most things, there is a balance of reliance and independence. And if independence leads to change and reliance leads to security, there must be a balance of change and security. We need to be needed, but not too much. We need to change, but not too much.