From Richard L. Evans:
There is sometimes evident an attitude of wanting to get out from under, not wanting to be accountable to anyone. Young people, for example, sometimes want to move away from home and family and friends. Work, education, opportunities in other areas, are often good reasons.
But to leave just to cut loose, just to go it alone, just to be free from being accountable to anyone may well not be wise. And before we feel we want to get away, to get out from under, we ought honestly to make sure we don’t want it for the wrong reasons.
No one is always safe. No one knows when he may become ill, or have an accident, or find himself in a serious situation. No one knows all the answers. No one can be sure he is self-sufficient.
Besides, others have much invested in us. Others have taught us, trained us, nursed and nourished us, loved us, and given us part of their lives—parents, teachers, doctors, friends, family have done this and much more—and they have a right to an interest in us, and we have an obligation to recognize that right.
There is also the fact that if we are alone and without the interest of others we could become lone and indifferent and deteriorate. Much of our life is for others and not for us. If life were simply satisfying our selfish selves, there wouldn’t be much progress or improvement. The faith and interest of others leads us to be better—and surely we wouldn’t for the wrong reasons want to separate ourselves from stabilizing factors and influences, and place ourselves in a position that would make it easier to lower our standards or lose the most precious things a person could possess: virtue, honesty, honor, respect, excellence of purpose and performance.
Almost anything can happen to any person, and the “cut-loose,” “get-out-from-under,” “leave-me-alone” attitude, in this sense, isn’t sensible or safe. To site a significant sentence: “There is no such thing in human existence as being so high you’re not responsible to anybody”33 ~Richard L. Evans, The Man and the Message (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1973), 125-26
