You may formally declare your independence through some outward show of defiance or self-reliance, but know this: nothing exists outside of relationship.

Though we travel to the heart of a desert and there pitch our tent, we may succeed in being isolated yet we will fail to be unrelated.

A relationship will exist between us and the land, between us and the lizards, cacti, coyotes and sand. Moreover, all those we fled will come along with us in our head.

Independence is a state of mind, not a place of residence; is a genuine feeling, not a posture. Nothing exists in isolation: Interdependence is in the nature of things.

To understand this - to see that an affinity between individual grains of sand constitutes the vast Sahara - paradoxically, is to experience true liberty.

~ unknown