“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when shame and sorrow occlude our own light from view, but there is still a clear eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another”
– James Baldwin, Nothing Personal
I’ve spent much of my life trying to keep the world from seeing me the way I was taught to see myself.
In constantly trying to prove the worthiness of my existence, I believed I had to give everything and accept nothing in return—not out of love, but from a quiet conviction that I didn’t deserve reciprocation. I learned to justify taking up space by being useful and independent. To never be a burden. But this only deepened a feeling of innate separation from others, leaving me with a strange kind of grief, and a gap I could never quite bridge.
I now know that most, if not all of us, carry that same quiet ache, regardless of the differences in what shaped it. But embracing our connection to and dependency on one another is one of the most beautiful parts of being alive.
Not only is it one of the most beautiful parts of being alive, but caring for the collective is survival. Especially for those whose identities, needs, or truths have been systemically erased or denied. Without community, there can be no liberation, and no change.
The illusion of individualism is cultural, systemic, and reinforced in the glorification of independence, productivity, and perfection. But it is in embracing our shared humanity, our inherent interconnection, that we best learn to love others and ourselves.
The overemphasis on individualism in our culture erodes our ability to trust one-another, and breeds paranoia. It convinces us that vulnerability is something that will inevitably harm us. It separates us not just from people, but from parts of ourselves.
When everyone around us is operating from that same disconnection, we start to think that loneliness is a personal failure. But loneliness is the outcome of a culture that has tried to convince us of individuality over community, and competition over compassion. A culture that draws our worth from how productive we are, and in turn, how much profit we create—not to the benefit of others, but to the benefit of greed.
Years ago, someone who should have been a safe person, convinced me I was harming my family and friends, and that they all despised me. I was isolated from everyone in my life, and I couldn’t even begin to tell what was real.
But my friends never left.
They didn’t judge me. They didn’t pull away. They didn’t treat our relationship as transactional. They didn’t demand clarity or require me to show up for them in return. They saw through all the fear and confusion I was trapped in—and they stayed.
It was only in their steadiness, their care, their love, that I began to come back to myself. To trust my own perception again. To rebuild trust in others.
There is no way to measure what it means to be surrounded by a community that holds you through your unraveling and asks nothing in return. I did nothing to deserve that love. But I believe we all owe it to each other.
That kind of care changed everything. It shaped how I relate to others. To try and offer that same compassion, to sit beside others with no agenda.
And in a culture that profits off our disconnection, communal love is resistance.
Love is a political act. To love in a culture of domination is to rebel against systems that teach us to see each other as disposable. To create and sustain loving community is to insist on the humanity of everyone in it. Choosing to build a life rooted in care, reciprocity, and collective belonging.
