Quotes About Interdependence

One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." Somehow we've come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we're very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It's as if we've divided the world into "those who offer help" and "those who need help." The truth is that we are both.

We don't have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.

we also need to consider letting go of the myth of self-sufficiency. One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." Somehow we've come to equate success with not needing anyone.

When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help.

She wasn't afraid of people in need because she wasn't afraid of needing others. She didn't mind extending kindness to others, because she herself relied on the kindness of others.

Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we're very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It's as if we've divided the world into "those who offer help" and "those who need help." The truth is that we are both.

She wasn't afraid of people in need because she wasn't afraid of needing others," my mom explained. "She didn't mind extending kindness to others, because she herself relied on the kindness of others." My mom and I didn't need to unpack the emotion behind that story. We both understood what MeeMaw had that we didn't: The capacity to receive.

To grow to adulthood as a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it's to become the one on whom others can depend.

May you always do for others and let others do for you. —Bob Dylan

what do your team members do that earns your trust? The most common answer: asking for help.

paradox is the appearance of contradiction between two related components. Although light and darkness seem to be opposites, you can't have one without the other—the opposing elements of a paradox are inextricably linked. Even though the elements seem contradictory, they actually complement and inform each other in ways that allow us to discover underlying truths about ourselves and the world.

If there's no autonomy between people, then there's no compassion or empathy, just enmeshment.

we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.

as members of a social species, we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.

The bottom line is that we need each other. And not just the civilized, proper, convenient kind of need. Not one of us gets through this life without expressing desperate, messy, and uncivilized need. The kind we are reminded of when we come face-to-face with someone who is in a deep struggle.

They live inside of what is essentially one huge wearable. Everyone connected to everyone even when they shit.

Where can we go if not to each other, resenting every step?

On the one hand, everything is connected, on the other hand, it is not.

when two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.

It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.

I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God.

Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.

We all are children and parents, students and teachers, healers and in need of care.