I will care for you as long as you care for me. Or I will love you as long as what you do or who you are brings me something I want. It would be foolish to pretend that human love can be free of this motivation. Nothing exists that does not serve, and nothing no stone, plant, or animal continues to exist without serving, without giving what is needed from it. Symbiosis in the broad sense is the law of nature.
Interdependence is the law of nature.
Love seeks that the other can work for his or her own truth, which means in the light of wisdom his or her own independent being. Interdependence is the law of nature, yet the aim of life is independent being, that is, being that is independent of the claims of the mortal body and the ephemeral, socially created self. For the human being, so wisdom teaches, independence means obedience to the permanent reality within and above ourselves. If interdependence is the law of life, we are speaking of not so much another law but another kind of life and another kind of interdependence. Fairy tales and legends, those which come from the heart of the world s wisdom teachings, continually speak to us of a reward that comes to men and women only if they seek no reward.