Blog 3529 – 07.03.2025
Codependency or Wholeness
The dictionary defines codependent as follows:
In one of my favorite books and movies, The Time Traveler’s Wife, there is a line delivered about Claire, the title character, by her girlfriend Charisse to her boyfriend Gomez who is upset to find out that there Clare has had a longtime love interest, Henry, the time traveler, that Gomez and Charisse are only just then finding out about. The line is, “Did you really think that she was going to miss the codependency bullet?”
For many people the fear of being alone drives them from relation to relationship trying to find their “better-half”, soul-mate, the one that completes them, as if they were only half a person.
One of the phrases that I repeat daily in my self-talk, my daily mantra is, “I am healthy, I am happy, I am whole.” I also carry in my pocket as a reminder a heart-shaped talisman that reads on one side, “Thank you for this day, Spirit” and on the other side, “I am Holy, I am Whole.”
I believe that loneliness, emptiness, and incompleteness are all myths that sadly too many have bought into as is the myth of isolation. There is a song that Barbra Streisand made popular. The character she plays in Funny Girl, Fanny Brice, sings it after meeting Nicky Arnstien. The song is called People and has the line, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Psychiatrists disagree and diagnose codependency as a psychological addiction that needs to be treated.
I believe that the root cause of this particular addiction and many others is mistaken identity. When we do not recognize or know Who and Whose we really are we are open to many misunderstandings and are also susceptible to all kinds of addictions to things with which we attempt to fill the perceived incompleteness, emptiness and aloneness in our lives.
The Beatles in their hit song Elenor Rigby asked, “All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they all belong?” People who need people are not the luckiest people in the world. Rather they are misguided and mistaken about who and whose they truly are.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby (From “Yellow Submarine”)
theencouragingword 