Neither Independent, Nor Dependent: The Power of Embracing Interdependence to Transform Your Life and Your World

How a simple cup of tea lead to the realization of humans interdependence and the impact that realization had on my work and life.

Photo by Charles Black and Courtesy of Chuck Black Photography.

As humans, we are neither dependent nor independent; we are all interdependent.

While relaxing with a cup of tea, I realized how interconnected people are.

It wasn’t some ayahuasca concoction. It was a simple cup of hot chai on the deck of a cafe in Wisconsin. The tea wasn’t the critical part of this transformative experience; how the tea got to me was.

Sometimes, the prosaic moments in life transform us more than the monumental events.

How It Started

I was sitting in the sun outside a cafe in Sheboygan, Wisconsin when a server brought me my transformational beverage. As I thanked her, I wondered if she had brewed the tea or if it was another employee. That trivial thought sent me down the proverbial rabbit hole.

I wondered about the process of brewing this simple cup of coffee. Sure, someone had heated the water and added the tea leaves, but before that, someone had to open that coffee shop, wash the cup, stock the tea, and all the other processes needed to run a cafe.

A delivery driver brought the tea from a warehouse that received the fragrant leaves in a shipment carried on an actual ship from the far side of the world. I imagined the hearty and weathered captain and crew who had crossed vast seas, transited a canal and safely docked in a far-off port to move the fragrant leaves from India, where they had been grown.

Somewhere on the Indian subcontinent was a field where farmers lovingly tended the trees that made my hot beverage possible. Those growers had labored to cultivate the ground, fertilize the shrubs, and discourage pests so the tea could grow and thrive.

Then, when the time was right, the growers became the harvesters. By hand, they had collected thier crop of tea leaves one leaf at a time because you don’t harvest all the tea at once like other crops. Instead, they…