Together and alone

"What wonderful creatures we human beings are -- so alike, and yet so different!  We can work together; we have built the Pyramids, the Great Wall, the great cathedrals of Europe, the temples of Peru.  We can play music, make quilts, run hospitals, program computers.  Yet we can also work alone.  Each one of us has the power to think, to plan, to carry out projects that are distinctly ours.


We are both interdependent and independent, and both of these characteristics can give us both joy and pain.  Sometimes we feel burdened and oppressed by other people.  They need us, they weigh on us.  We think that if only they would leave us alone, we could realize our true potential.


At other times we feel desperately, achingly alone.  Unsupported, abandoned, at such times we may think that if only we had someone on our side, if only someone cared, we would succeed.  True freedom, however, like true security, lies within us.  We cannot get them from others; we must find them in ourselves."

-- Casey and Vanceburg, The Promise of a New Day