The Three Myths Keeping Us Apart

(and Why Interdependence Feels Radical Again)

We stand because we are connected

This weekend felt heavy.

Not just because of the headlines, but because of the familiar pattern beneath them — isolation hardening into certainty, certainty hardening into harm. The details differ, but the emotional architecture feels increasingly recognizable.

I’ve been sitting with a question I don’t have a clean answer to:

What are we teaching ourselves to believe about one another that makes this feel inevitable?

I keep coming back to three myths — not as accusations, but as habits of thought I recognize in our communities, in our culture at large, and sometimes in myself.

Myth #1: Radical Independence

The idea that we are meant to carry pain, failure, grief, and survival alone.

It shows up in subtle ways:

“Don’t be a burden.”

“Handle it yourself.”

“Personal responsibility” 

There is value in agency and resilience. But radical independence — stripped of context, history, and support — asks us to pretend that we were never children, never dependent, never shaped by forces beyond our control.

Interdependence isn’t the opposite of strength.

It’s the opposite of powerlessness.

None of us arrive here alone. None of us stay here alone either, even when we try.

Myth #2: Moral Purity

The belief that the world can be divided neatly into good people and bad people — and that safety comes from identifying, isolating, or expelling the latter.

This myth is seductive because it promises clarity in moments of fear. It offers certainty when ambiguity feels unbearable.

But it comes at a cost.

When we stop believing people can take accountability and repair harm, we start believing elimination is the only answer.

Elimination doesn’t always look violent. Sometimes it looks like exile, cancellation, permanent shaming, or the quiet erasure of someone’s humanity.

Accountability and repair are harder. They require time, boundaries, humility, and the uncomfortable work of staying in relationship without excusing harm. But without them, we are left with only extremes — innocence or annihilation — and very little room for actual change.

Myth #3: Power Only Flows Top-Down

The idea that real change comes only from authority, domination, or force.

This belief leaves many people feeling small and helpless, waiting for permission or rescue that may never come. It also concentrates responsibility in places too distant to respond with care.

But I’ve watched power move sideways and from the bottom up.

I’ve seen it emerge in rooms where people sing together, tell the truth about their fear, show up imperfectly, and choose presence over performance. I’ve seen culture shift not through command, but through coherence.

Power doesn’t only flow from the top.

It can flow from anywhere and especially through relationship.

A Reminder, Not a Solution

In the midst of isolation and fear, our community wrote something we are calling a Declaration of Interdependence.

Not as a manifesto.

Not as an answer.

But as a reminder.

A reminder that autonomy and connection are not opposites.

That accountability and compassion can coexist.

That none of us were meant to survive this moment alone.

This week, I’m picking up a poster version of that Declaration. I don’t see it as a statement of arrival — only as a physical artifact of something we’re still working to practice.

An Invitation

I don’t expect agreement.

I only hope we pause long enough to question the stories we’ve inherited about strength, purity, and power — and to consider whether they are helping us care for one another, or quietly pulling us further apart.

Interdependence isn’t easy.

But neither is the world we’re trying to navigate.

And the good news is that we don’t have to do it alone.