It might be that coming month Scotland, ‘my’ country — as I
live here— goes independent. And maybe not. With joy I received my poll card
for The Scottish Independence Referendum
It feels as such an honour to vote for this on
the 18th of September: the choice of independence
for a country, without any war needing to be fought first. Having the choice of voting ‘Yes’ or
voting ‘No’. The Referendum brings up lots of discussion, also in our Findhorn
Foundation Community and I think this to be very positively, whatever the
outcome will be. A neighbour’s window, which says: “Hope not fear, Dare to vote
Yes”, makes me smile every time I pass it.
I just learned that it is not Scotland’s first attempt to
be independent; the oldest surviving document about this fact is from 1320 when
the Scots issued a ‘declaration of independence’ to be freed from English
aggression and its dominating power and become its own sovereignty. Not far away
from Findhorn lies Culloden Battlefield, which is an old wound in the
country’s history. But personally I feel this independence moves away from the
past and has all to do with wishing to decide its own future, more than
Hollyrood (where the Scottish government resides) can do now.
This all reminds me of my own and our inter-dependence. I
live alone and although I am not depending on a special relationship and as
such could be called ‘an independent woman’ in the traditional sense, in the
modern sense I am as inter-dependent as anybody else, as a human being. We all
are depending, in the first place on nature, on the Earth. But we are also depending on our
friends, in a light —hopefully healthy— way, as they are depending on us. I am inter-dependent
of my customers, friends and acquaintances, people who already know my graphic
and photo work, who for instance ask me to do some design work for their
business or who buy some notebooks from my studio or a photo book from the
online web shop…. We serve each other.
So, if it will be a ‘Yes’, may we become neighbours who
service each other well, who realise they are inter-dependent, both part of
Europe.
The pictures I chose are about the interdependence in
nature like between this intertwined group of cactuses in Jujuy in the north of
Argentina.
August 2014, photo and text ©
Adriana Sjan Bijman
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