[khedoros]

I think that an independent person is someone who could pick themselves back up if everything were taken away from them. Someone can be independently wealthy but be a dependent person.

My wife certainly has a more independent personality than I do. I put more faith in her ability to recover if I got hit by a bus than I put in my own ability, were the situation reversed. People like her make me believe that there's a difference between "dependent by circumstance" and "dependent by nature", and experience tells me that neither of those are static qualities. Circumstances shift, and someone may grow or regress according to their environment and personality.