Chapter 4

In this chapter touched on the idea of autonomy. In short, autonomy is self-sufficiency or independence. I really related to this chapter because it in part describes who I am. I’m not someone who likes to feel as though I need some one else to succeed in my life. While I enjoy having people with close to me to help and support me, I don’t even want to feel as though I am relying on someone to get by. Pretty early in my life I knew that I wanted to break away from the shelter life that my parents had for me. It was important that I understood the world that I lived in even if that meant going through some challenges alone. A prime example of this is when I decided that I wanted to get a job. My parents first reaction to this was “why” and then in slowly turned into “okay” and then “we know someone who knows someone who owns a store”. When I expressed to them the importance of me finding, applying and getting my own job, they didn’t fully understand why I would want to do this. Why not use the connections that they had. That is how life works after all. What they didn’t understand was that the point of me actually getting a job was to go through the process. I was, in a way, testing myself for the years to come. I wanted to know, even in a small way like this, that I was capable of standing on my own and creating my own connections. It’s important for people not only to be self-sufficient, but to have the understanding that they can stand on their own. A lot of people begin to rely on a family member or a friend to keep them on their feet but it is important for the people that care most for them to give them to push that they need to make the realize that they have the ability to face the world on their own.