This happens not because I'm a wind sock or because you have an overwhelming personality, but because I am human. We each have a subtle ability to synch with those around us. Most of this is preconscious, but nonetheless useful. We can depend upon this feature to guide, inform, adapt, and sustain us.

Much of what we learn seems to focus upon the objective individual acting as an independent agent. In this culture (this feature is quite different in other cultures), we imprint on the John Wayne notion of self-reliance. Yet no man has ever been an island.

We live in relationship. We work in relationship, too. In relationship with our context and with the others around us. Our near obsession with self nimbly blinds us to this fundamental fact of life. In a very real (but seemingly surreal) sense, we live in relationship with others, and not as independent agents.

Once this little switch gets flipped, nothing is ever the same again. We take less personal responsibility and more functional responsibility. I live through you, acknowledging that you also live through me.

Would the world be different if we could, in those moments of apparent isolation or those demanding only individual responsibility, see that we are not, never, ever acting alone? Hang with that question for a moment, let it sublet some space near your heart. The answer might remind you who you really are.