No one is really an independent man or woman. The notion that you should live without help is a modern idea. Ancient people just wouldn’t understand it. The rider of a horse in the age of Sophocles saw his steed as both a form of transport and a means of keeping time–a horse was a clock. A horse’s day of labor was a calendar.
A horse was a figure of dreams. Very likely a horse could reveal your fortune. “Show me your horse and I will tell you what you are,” says an old English proverb. Throughout history horses and dogs have kept us alive.
Do you see that woman on Fifth Avenue in New York? She’s thrity something, blonde, has a Yankees warm up jacket and a backpack. She might be a professor at NYU. She’s walking with a guide dog, a black Labrador. She’s moving very fast. She passes the darkening mirrors of storefront windows, walks so fast she appears to move ahead of the weather. Together she and her dog are racing through the black gardens of blindness. They are worthy of an ancient oath that was taken between men and animals. And there they are, outside of the coffee bean store, together in the exercise of their amazing life together. Did you see them?
Planet of the Blind 
Rehab specialists are notorious for throwing around the word “independence”. Honestly, it typically is every other word out of their mouths! It’s weird. In a presentation later this month for older adults with age-related macular degeneration, the rehab option that I will present is: Learn to foster healthy INTER-DEPENDENT relationships with family, friends or paid assistance. Really, developing the fine art of inter-dependence is usually the much more challenging skill, and the much more rewarding, too, for all of us.
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