We Here Now series
Breaking Free From Me To We
Our obsession with our too-small selves is driving us to self-destruction. Time to break open the shells that entrap us in fearful loneliness and come home to one another.
If Boomers were the the “me” generation, Millennials and Gen Z’s have become the “i” generations. With his iPod, iPad, and iPhone ad nauseum, Steve Jobs may simply have intended to brand his Apple products as (i)nternet-based, but their “persuasive” design quickly transformed them into addictive drugs of “I”-obsession. What has followed is a mass-cult of self-absorption based not on a healthy appreciation for one’s uniqueness but a futile quest for self-importance amid the wholesale commercial theft of our personal identities. Paradoxically, all this self-fixation has left youth today with an ever more insecure sense of who they really are. Consumer capitalism accelerated by addictive social media pretends to celebrate our uniqueness while actually stealing our souls and leaving us starved for authentic attention.
Our ever more desperate search for purpose, meaning and fulfillment in all the wrong places is driving our youth to pandemic loneliness and isolation, anxiety, depression and suicide. Even those at the pinnacle of the power pyramid — the billionaires, celebrities, and politicians who appear to be masters of the universe — are largely driven by still more unappeasable insecurities differing only in scale and impact from our own. No accumulation of money, fame, power or prestige assuages their self-secret sense of worthlessness.
Those obsessed with a fruitless quest for affirmation through social media, self-advertisement and celebrity culture are trapped inside kryptonite eggshells unable to break them open to connect with others and are thus doomed to a purgatory of emotional isolation. Lacking the touch, feel and intimacy of live interactions, we seek a sense of belonging by joining with our tribe of choice in despising those whom we mistakenly imagine have found what we so painfully lack. Both personally and collectively, this path leads not to self-fulfillment but self-destruction.
Ironically, the shell of self-protection many of us fabricate around our fragile sense of self seals us off from those essential sources of nourishment only others can provide. Suffocating in our airless internal atmospheres, we languish for lack of the vital oxygen of companionship and love.
We’re Not All That Important And That’s Actually Good News
The truth is that we’re not the center of anyone else’s universe. They’re busy navigating their own challenges. That fact may initially strike us as evidence of the world’s heartlessness, but over time we may come to realize that it’s an invitation to pursue our heart’s desires free at last from fear of the judgments of others. None of us are that important after all, no matter our position in the world, and that’s actually good news. Now we’re free to discover and become who we really are.
We are not the fearful lonely souls we often feel ourselves to be in our less confident moments but protean beings with permeable boundaries inseparable from all else in this infinite living universe. Not isolated selves too vulnerable on our own to sustain a fulfilling life but the sum of our relationships with others — people, pets, animals, plants, birds and insects — all of whom nourish and are nourished by us in a synergistic web of mutual trust.
We humans are now facing the most crucial transition in our all-too-brief sojourn on earth — the challenge of migrating our primary identities from Me to We. We moderns in particular have lost the sacred sense of connection to all things that indigenous peoples and preliterate cultures always relied on to sustain themselves through life’s fierce struggles and inescapable uncertainties. It’s time to dissolve the shell that seals us off from one another and enter into a wider world to explore the vastly larger sense of self that is our one true home and our only enduring source of inner security.
There Is No They There, Just Us
Yet it’s essential that in migrating from Me to We we embrace a definition of “we” that encompasses not just all humans but all beings — animals, plants, insects and other creatures that we believe to be alive as well as rocks, water, fire and air that we imagine, perhaps erroneously, to be insensate. As humans we’re still stuck in a “we-they” polarity. We accomplish astounding feats in service to our own in-group but only in opposition to those we cast as “others.” To survive and thrive, the leap of insight we must now make is to widen the circle of our identities and concerns to include all those we reflexively “other.” In truth, there is no they there. There’s just us, here and now.
The transition from Me to We will not be easy. I find it intensely uncomfortable to include in my definition of “we” those whose politics I fiercely oppose. I sometimes experience fantasies of seeing them all magically disappear, as they no doubt imagine disappearing me. “Why don’t they all just die?” I hear myself saying inwardly before, blushing with embarrassment, I summon up my better angels of kindness and compassion. But then I go swimming at the local pool and meet up with John, a good-hearted man who happens to hold diametrically opposing political views. As with family members with divergent perspectives, we tacitly agree to love one another and forget the rest. If I were drowning, there’s no one I’d trust more to rescue me than John.
At some profound level we fear that if we loosen our grip on our fragile imperiled lesser selves, we’ll simply disappear, our identities, values and possessions vanishing into anonymity. If we let go, what happens to all we do to protect ourselves and assert our importance in the world? It’s a bit like learning to float. I recall the terror I felt when my parents first tried to teach me to believe in my buoyancy. As I trembled in their hands supporting me from below, they sought to reassure me by saying, “Don’t worry, we won’t let you go.” As it happened, though, it was only when they did let go that I discovered I could indeed float on my own, supported by every molecule of water below and around me. So it is with our fragile sense of selfhood. Call it mercy. Call it grace. Each of us is supporting and being supported by everything else.
Most Strangers Are Just Friends We Have Yet To Meet
In this pivotal moment we experience not just personal loneliness but species loneliness, a fear and mistrust of the very beings, both living and inanimate, that are our larger soul and sole salvation. In our frantic flailing to stay afloat, we endanger both ourselves and one another, threatening both our personal and collective futures. So we’re finally forced to migrate, not to some remote imaginary destination free of all the crises we’ve created for ourselves, but towards one another with our forever imperfect natures. As Tibetan teacher Pema Chodron says, there’s a wisdom in acknowledging that there is no escape from either ourselves or one another, for only when we accept them whole and unabridged can we settle on solid ground and learn to embrace them without reservation or regret. Whether we dissolve or break the shells we’ve built like fragile fortresses around us, now is the time to step forth into a wider world and come home to one another. Most strangers are not the potential threats we fear they may be but friends we have yet to meet.
