Victims of Our Contexts

None of us are really individuals.

Of course, we are single persons, with dreams, aspirations, fears, experiences, and every other thing that makes us who we are. No other person can see inside our head, fully know every intricacy of our very selves. In that sense, sure, we are individuals. We are unique beings, standing alone as us.

But we are not really individuals.

Each of us is shaped by our contexts, formed by who we are around and what we have experienced. We do not enter life as a blank tablet and etch our own stories. No matter how much we desire to shape our own destinies, we cannot escape the inevitability that other people will add their fingerprints to the ever-mutable clay in which we are formed.

For good or for ill, we are shaped by the community that surrounds us. So many of us are victims of our contexts, carrying wounds from memories lived lifetimes ago. Our scars speak to us as they cry out from our memories and in our present. We are both hardened and broken by suffering experienced in our past. That pain shapes who we are, as we would not be who we are without those experiences.

Conversely, we are beneficiaries of our contexts, learning and growing from the wisdom of the people and the community around us. Virtues are passed down from generation to generation, from teacher to student, from sacred writing to sacred listener. Wisdom is shared by the community, as she speaks to anyone willing to lend an open ear. All that we have learned, we have learned from someone, or something, else.

No, we are not individuals. We are a part of a body that can only function when it functions together.

Many of society’s sins are committed because people attempt to be individuals, seeking after their own personal gain. When people care more for their self-interests to the detriment of society’s, bad things tend to happen. Competition usurps cooperation as a communal ideal.

Humility will teach us that we are not that important as individuals. Rather, together we are more than we could ever be alone.

We are victims and beneficiaries of our contexts, being shaped by who and what we exist around. Our experiences form us, our pain shapes us, and our community teaches us.

We exist communally. Let us journey together communally as well. May we move forward hand in hand, arm in arm, facing the suffering of the world, and seeking its liberation together.