I'd like to talk about my friend Sushila, who I've known since we were at school together in Biratnagar, in Nepal. She now lives in Kathmandu and works as a freelance photographer.
She's the most independent person I know, and it showed very early. At sixteen, when most of us still asked our parents for pocket money, she started teaching basic computer skills to younger children to pay for her own camera. At nineteen she moved to Kathmandu alone, found a room, and worked in a printing shop while she built her portfolio. Her family were worried and wanted her to study accounting, but she was determined to make photography work.
Even now, she does almost everything herself. She manages her own bookings and accounts, she fixes her motorbike, and last year she travelled for three weeks around western Nepal on her own to photograph remote villages for a magazine. When something goes wrong, her first reaction isn't to ask for help but to work out how to solve it herself.
Would I like to be as independent as her? Partly, yes. I admire her confidence, and I'd love to be able to make big decisions without needing everyone's approval. I still ask my parents' opinion about nearly everything, even though I'm twenty-five. On the other hand, I think she sometimes takes it too far. When she had a bad fever on one of her trips, she didn't tell anyone for days, and that worried us all. So I'd say I'd like to be a bit more like her, but I also think being able to rely on other people is a strength, not a weakness.