“I say that it touches a man that his blood is sea water and his tears are salt, that the seed of his loins is scarcely different from the same cells in a sea weed, and that of stuff like his bones coral is made. I say that the physical and biologic law lies down with him, and wakes when a child stirs in the womb, and that the sap in a tree, up rushing in the spring, and the smell of the loam, where the bacteria bestir themselves in darkness, and the path of the sun in the heaven, these are facts of first importance to his mental conclusions, and that a man who goes in no consciousness of them is a drifter and a dreamer, without a home or any contact with reality.”By Donald Culross Peattie, An Almanac for Moderns: A Daybook of Nature, 1935. Quote from, The Molecules of life by Russ Hodge
The interdependence in our family relationships is only one manifestation of billions of years of evolution of the interdependence of all life. The human is unique in having the capacity to be self-directed, although 99.9% of the time most of us appear to be under the influence of our family relationships…responding, reacting, complying, rebelling, etc. with little truly independent thought and principled behavior. Try being as much yourself with a family member as you are with your best friend and see what happens. There’s a lot to learn about self and family.
