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.<p>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&#x27;s a difference between &quot;dependent by circumstance&quot; and &quot;dependent by nature&quot;, 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.