Today is the Fourth of July, Americas Independence Day. Since breaking ties with the monarchy we’ve pressure tested democracy and became a thriving nation. What if some of the independence we celebrate can have unanticipated consequences? The little boxes we live in and the nuclear families that inhabit them can turn a palace into a prison if we independently drive our cars into our garages.lock up our doors and close our blinds. I love my independence more than anything but the reality is that we are all interdependent on each other as neighbors on this earth.

Depression and anxiety can grow out of control if our independence is out of balance with our interdependence. Isolation was a picture painted by our culture as connected to affluence and the success of our nation. In other cultures around the world interdependence is the root to people’s well-being. Research shows that people with high levels of social support seem to be more resilient in the face of stressful situations. They also have a lower perception of stress in general and have less of a physiological response to life's stressors.

Thinking of the Fourth of July celebrations this last weekend, it was a celebration of community coming together, not independently but interdependently. It’s my growing edge right now to reverse learn my culturally ingrained habits of independence and ask for help when I need it, lean on my community and make connections with the people that feed my spirit.

Here’s a couple quotes I'm pondering right now:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ” - African Proverb

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.” -Desmond Tutu

- Dean