I am an individualist, and have lived life that way intently and consciously throughout the years.  For an individualist, reliance upon others is often seen as a form of failure, as a weakness, as lazy.  I know this because I have felt those things and judged others as such.

I have picked up the shovel and dug the hole with my bare hands.  I have demolished and built; I have fixed and destroyed; I have learned and I have taught; I have created and dismissed.  I have been against the wall and solved the puzzle.  I have done these things as the individualist that I am: with no thought to ask permission or no intention to ask for help.

Women have jested that I am a man and that we are simply that way.  But they are no better than I.  Individualism knows no boundaries and we recognize each other, we individualists and we recognize those who wear the mask of individualism.  They are the worst: the miscreant liars of loneliness, because the fakers of individualism; they are weakness behind the mask of strength.

The thieves of strength rely upon their masks to undermine the secret of individualists: that we need and desire help; we need others in order to be individuals.  Where else would I have learned the trades and arts that I know?

Whom else would answer the questions I have about the tools and ways that I have come to rely upon but from those who have recognized that being an individualist means learning from the silent and still waters of experience and time.