One of the most beloved teachings of the Vietnamese monk and Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, is his reflection on a simple piece of paper. If we look deeply, he says, we can see the clouds in the paper. Without clouds, there would be no rain; without rain, there would be no trees; without trees, there would be no paper. The sunshine, the soil, the logger, the mill worker, the truck driver, and the cashier at the store where you bought the paper are all present in there as well. Nothing exists on its own. The paper exists in relationship with everything else.

Thich Nhat Hanh called this truth interbeing—the understanding that we are not separate, isolated selves moving through a world of others, but expressions of an interconnected web of life. To touch one thing deeply is to touch everything. The concept of Ubuntu, from Southern African philosophy, also teaches I am because we are—that our lives and liberation are fundamentally intertwined. 

This insight is not new. The truth of our interconnectedness is ancient, Indigenous, ecological, and scientific. It is at the core of all mystic traditions. Yet it is radically countercultural in the dream of the modern world that trains us to see ourselves as separate individuals and where everything—from our health care to our education systems— is specialized and compartmentalized. We are taught to see the world as “parts”, rather than the relationships that connect everything as whole living systems.   

The boundaries of what we call “self” are also far more porous than we are taught to believe. Our bodies and beings are continuously shaped by the ecologies we are part of—by the quality of the air, water, and soil; by landscapes and skies we see; by seasonal cycles and weather patterns; and by the foods, songs, stories, architecture, and livelihoods that emerge and evolve in relation to place. We are shaped by social relationships, by familial and cultural patterns, by the political systems we live in and the traumas we carry. Even within our own bodies, we are ecosystems: trillions of microorganisms living in symbiosis, digesting our food, regulating our immune systems, and influencing our moods and desires. We are not a single, isolated entity—we are a whole community of beings.

Joanna Macy, systems thinker and the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects, often spoke about the need to see with new eyes, which was later revised to include seeing with ancient eyes. Joanna invited people to step out of the trance of separation and into a lived awareness of belonging: our belonging to Earth, to our ancestors, to future generations, to the wider body of life, and to each other. This shift in perception changes everything. When we change how we see, we change how we act. Our understanding of who we are shapes the kind of economic, political and social systems we create. When our identity is constricted into a narrow, isolated frame of “me,” fear becomes the driver to keep us safe and it makes sense to hoard, to dominate, to build walls, and to protect ourselves at all costs from the “other”. But when we awaken from the trance and remember our interbeing—when our identity expands from “me” to “we,” different choices arise. It shows up in the decisions and actions of our everyday lives:

• Supporting policies that protect water, land, and vulnerable communities because harm to one part of the system harms the whole.
• Practicing mutual aid and acts of care as essential to our well-being and survival.
• Standing up for your immigrant neighbor, recognizing that our freedom, humanity and dignity is bound together. 
• Slowing down and making decisions that put life at the center and consider the well-being of future generations.
• Tending to our own healing, knowing that “hurt people hurt people” and that unprocessed trauma ripples outward and forward in time. 
• Choosing to buy less and repair more, recognizing our participation in global supply chains and the impacts of waste. There is no Planet B! 

Before you move on, consider one small way you can live from “we” today— a decision, a conversation, an act of care, or a moment of listening that honors the truth that we are in this together.

To see with new—or ancient—eyes is to remember who we have always been: threads in a miraculous living tapestry of life, shaping and being shaped by one another, and co-creating a future that honors the flourishing of the whole.