Interdependence

It is difficult to create a healthy community of interdependent individuals, but I believe that is the goal. Finding others who value relationships to the same degree is difficult. Many aspects of our contemporary society push us away from creating such a community. The way we structure our education, the way we structure our workplace, the way we structure our leisure, the way we structure our identity, etc.-- we structure all of these in a way that devalues significant relationship building. Why do we do this? Because having healthy relationships takes work. If it takes work, why concern ourselves with it? Because having healthy relationships is the single most important activity and value with which we can occupy our time and effort. In the short term it may seem easier to not reach out to others, or to not be real in our communications--we want to avoid conflict, or we don't believe someone is worth the effort, or we are scared. We value quantity over quality--if you take more time with one person, you won't have as much time to meet and be with new persons. We want to have so many friends but we can't be more than an acquaintance to them all. Which, let's be honest, might work out best if you really don't want to respond to that 3:00AM call for help at the airport two hours away. If no one is really your friend, it's just easier to live life, right? That is, until you are at the airport at 3:00AM with no money, almost out of battery on your phone and you didn't get the job you had flown after. 

We always talk about money making life easier, money solving our problems. Money is only the answer to life's problem when life is about structures: deadlines, transportation, trying to control the feelings of others, fixing things on our own. Once life becomes about relationships, and we start facing communication and honesty head on, all of the old problems become secondary, obstacles to be overcome by simply building stronger relationships with those around us. 

Don't have time to both work a job and fix healthy food? As we enter into meaningful relationships, learning to receive what others have to offer, not seeking to control all of the outcomes, new moments are created that we could not have imagined. As we learn to share responsibility for our work, at the job and at home, not claiming total ownership of a deal or a child, we are freed from the anxiety that accompanies the stress that comes from sole responsibility.  We are also open to enjoy the pleasure that comes in sharing the accomplishment of a task with others. No matter how much you accomplish on your own, it will never mean as much as the work you accomplish with others. And, the more people you can meaningfully involve in that work, the more meaningful the work becomes. But the involvement must be direct, actual engagement, as a matter of real relationship building, and not a matter of structural interactions or bureaucracy. As we learn to base our identities on the values that make up healthy relationship building, our communities will be happier, our individual identities will be stronger and we will be more productive. 

For, real productivity is a function of how much we by build together in healthy relationships. No matter how much we "move forward", if that movement is built on forms, procedures, structures or discourse that inflict cruelty on any individual by negating their personhood, then all of the forward movement in one area has come at the cost of moving backward in another area. 

We must learn to value the personhood of every individual, recognizing that the best patterns for working are those that simultaneously build individual and community identity in the production of economic and cultural life. 

So, give up on having control over others, on dictating how they should think about an issue. Learn to appreciate where they are coming from and what their unique experience can offer your limited perspective. We are all limited in some way. That's why coming together in real relationships is so important: we can overcome individual weakness as we believe in each other and work together. Individual weakness will remain but it will not impose the tragic ending that the heroic protagonist's would. Cease to be the Greek hero all the time. Let others have their day, and take joy in their success. 

Don't worry about always being the perfect conservative, the perfect liberal. Don't paint yourself as the self sacrificing mother, or the ever-stable man. Don't inflict that discursive cruelty on yourself. You are a person. You are not the flamboyant gay or the prickly feminist. You are not your depression or your success. You are also your failures and your happy moments. You are both. And when you are one, someone else is the other. Pluralism means recognizing the importance of difference, not just tolerating the existence of an other. We move forward as we believe in ourselves and in others. We move forward when we value togetherness more than being right. We move forward when we first value dialog and understanding over our own fears and insecurities. 

Join with you neighbors to begin creating a community of healthy relationships. Share emotional time and space with the people with whom you share physical time and space. At work, at home, at the grocery store, in the car, we build the structures of our life just as we build a novel: through exhaustive detail. Make your story one of exhaustive joy.