The Hidden Roots of Human Relationship

Last September, I returned to the mountains of Colorado for the first fall in nearly a decade. Hiking the trails above my hometown, I found myself in a massive stand of deep yellow aspen trees. Rather than pushing through to keep my heart rate up and get to the top of the mountain (as I often do), I stopped, transfixed by their beauty.

Aspens are as common as dandelions in this part of the world, but there is magic in these groves, when one slows down enough to notice. Even the slightest breeze ignites a shiver through the canopy, the golden coins of the leaves flashing and shimmering while the dark eyes on the ashy trunks watch, solid and still. 

Using the plural to describe aspens is misleading. Although they give the impression of being distinct and separate trees in their above-ground state, in reality they are one organism—the majority of the “body” (the root system) underground, unseen but no less real. 

What we perceive as individual trees are genetically identical clones, their unique forms shaped by the influences of their micro-environments: by nurture rather than nature, if you will. Like nodes in a unified system, the seemingly distinct trunks and branches are individual expressions of one organism that can span dozens of acres. 

We often hear the adage that humans are social creatures, but this gets filtered through the lens of an individualistic culture. Being social animals doesn’t mean that we, a bunch of individuals, like to hang out with each other and are stoked when we get to. And it doesn’t just mean that we depend on each other for our survival, from our primary caretakers who raise us, to the farmers who raise our food. All of these are facets of the truth, but don’t touch the depth of it.

Our truth is closer to that of the aspens.

What it really means, that humans are social animals, is that we are not only influenced by those around us, but shaped by them. The “I” that you know yourself to be emerges out of an embeddedness in relationship. There is no “I” without the “we”.

To truly grasp this, we can turn to cultures that have a deeper understanding of our innate interconnectedness. There is a Swahili term that embodies this—ubuntu, translated as “I am because we are.” Similarly, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses the word interbeing to express the reality that we are not individual beings but parts of an integrated whole. The translation of the Mayan phrase in la’kesh, popularized by California Chicano poet Luis Valdez in his gorgeous poem by the same name, speaks to this truth: “you are my other me.” 

We cannot and do not exist in isolation: separation is a myth, a cognitive and abstract concept that contradicts reality. 

I am because we are. Tu eres mi otro yo—you are my other me.

Our brains are shaped by our interactions with the world around us, with the people around us. Every conversation, every subtle rejection, every experience of being held and embraced, seen or unseen, adds up to create the blueprint of who we are. This is truest when we are at our most malleable, in the earliest years of life, but remains true for as long as we have a brain.

The quality and consistency, the texture and shape, of the interactions and connections we have with others and with our world influence who we become. And the ways that we interact and engage with others shapes them and who they become. We become who we are through relationship, for better or for worse.

When we say that humans are a social animal, it goes deeper than the desire to be around cool people who like me. It means that the fabric of our lives, our psyches, our beingness are intertwined with each other. It means that “me” and “you” is an abstract distinction that just refers to the boundaries of our skin, not the essence of who we are.

Maybe you’ve had the experience where you’ve spent so much time with someone that you started to notice yourself imitating them in your mannerisms, your tone of voice, the little turns of phrase that you use. Has this happened to you? You can feel their expressions on your face and hear their intonations coming out of your mouth. Some of us are more susceptible than others to this effect, but all of us are to some degree absorbing and reflecting each other.

There is a popular adage that you’ve likely heard: we become the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time. There is neurobiological truth to this, but it goes beyond five people. Social contagion research shows that we are influenced not only by our friends, but their friends, and theirs. We are embedded within complex and vast social networks that shape and are shaped by us—the immense grove of aspens of which we are a part.

And just as those aspen trees are united beneath the surface, we, as interconnected beings, attune to each other in invisible and unconscious ways. There are layers of relationship beneath our relationships, in the ways we subconsciously intuit signals of warmth or coldness, openness or rigidity, safety and trust or I don’t know what it is about that person, I just have this FEELING.

Communication doesn’t just happen with the words that come out of our mouths, it is happening all the time in ways that we usually aren’t consciously aware of. Our bodies are silently talking to each other and our feelings are being felt in each other's bodies. Our emotions, while often painful or inconvenient, are like an internal tuning fork, resonating with the social world around us and our place in it. The relational and emotional dimensions are the water we are swimming in, whether we like or acknowledge it. 

This isn’t woo-woo, touchy-feely stuff: it’s the basic stuff of being human. When we ignore this basic truth, or pretend that it doesn’t matter, when we see the threads between us as a nice distraction at best or a gross inconvenience at worst, we create the conditions for disconnection. 

Connection with one another is a need. Not a “that would be cool if I had that thing” need, but an absolute, literal need, like food or water or a dry and warm place to take shelter in the winter. If you’ve ever experienced real physical hunger, whether by choice or by circumstance, you know the ache in your belly that signals a survival need. Similarly, you can identify a true need by the unwavering insistence that consumes your attention and energy until you attend to it. 

Loneliness is the hunger of a soul insisting on connection. To be seen, to be known, to be loved: these are elements of belonging. Without these things, we are not okay. Without these things, there is a low thrum of dysregulation beneath the surface of our lives, a steady longing for something that we can’t quite put our finger on but are searching everywhere to find.

Loneliness is believing and acting (by choice or by circumstance) as if we are not deeply connected to each other. It is one of many symptoms of the story of separation that weaves its way through our cultural milieu like a noxious gas. This cultural story pretends that we are each of us lone individuals pitted against each other, entrenched in a reality of vigilant competition and, therefore, self-protection.

An abundance of words has been written about the epidemic of loneliness in our culture. “Deaths of despair” is well-known phrase in our social lexicon, or at least a well-known experience: many of us personally know more than one person whose life has ended through suicide or drug or alcohol-related incidents. Still more of us have experienced firsthand the aching depths of depression, the frenetic angst of anxiety, the slow and urgent pulse of chronic stress. All of these are symptoms of a culture steeped in disconnection and toxic individualism.

On a larger societal level, the consequence of disconnecting from the truth of our interconnectedness is the ennobling of dehumanization. The belief in separation justifies doing all kinds of terrible shit to each other, things that we would and could never do if we were tuned in to the deep and inextricable connections between us. 

But the crux of this, the irony of this story? When we create systems that deny our shared humanity, that deny people access to their basic needs and rights (or that actively harm people), we hurt ourselves. 

In order to look in your eyes and do violence to you, I have to have cut off something inside of myself that connects me to you. I have to sever the thread between us and position you as other, even as I justify my actions as protecting myself or those I consider my own. But because of our innate interbeing, this disconnection causes as much harm to me as it does to you. One part of the body attacking another and pretending the blood isn’t my own.

In the words of Luis Valdez: si te hago daño a ti / me hago daño a mismo (if I do harm to you, I do harm to myself).

On an everyday level, dehumanization is the tendency to look through each other, to forget that the other people walking around on this planet are not NPCs walking around in my own private video game. It is engaging in transactional ways, extracting what I need without recognizing others’ full humanity, when I engage at all. This invites the smaller hurts and insults of our world: looking through the barista (or at my phone) while I order my coffee, cutting people off in traffic, lashing out at servers or customer service representatives as a way to unload my frustration.

The result of severe disconnection and dehumanization is trauma, a word that gets a lot of play these days. What doesn’t get as much time in the spotlight? How we heal trauma. (Spoiler: it’s not by tiptoeing around it or never triggering each other, as if that was even possible.) Research shows the most effective vehicle for healing past experiences of relational injury or acute disconnection is positive relational experiences in the present. Connection. 

The way we interact with each other matters. We as individuals are only as healthy as our roots, our connections with each other. And when we attend to our relationships, to the “we”, to the space between us, it nourishes us as individuals and makes us better. If we are to heal ourselves and this broken world, we must attend to the foundational reality of our interdependence.

It is not a bonus or luxury—or, god forbid, a sign of weakness—to care for each other and to take care of each other. It is not a waste of time to nurture the connections between us, to laugh and cry together, to delight in each other's presence or to repair the ruptures that inevitably arise—repairs that actually strengthen the connective tissue between us). Our humanity is not optional.

Every group, team, or community is a stand of aspen trees, our unique individual selves linked by something common and unseen beneath the surface. And belonging, as we know, is the simultaneous fulfillment of the need for connection and for authentic expression. It is both the underground roots and the aboveground form.

If every experience shapes us, this is beautiful news. It means that there is innate potential for growth and healing in literally every interaction. It means that when we take the time to build authentic relationships with each other, to truly see others and let ourselves be seen, we are nourishing our common roots.

As you move through your day, I invite you to remember that you are an individual tree expressing your unique self in the world and which emerges from the interconnected root system beneath the surface, from your relationships with those around you. How might you tend to these roots—in your team, with the youth you support, in your larger community? 

When we create spaces where people can go beyond the transactional—to connect authentically, appreciate each other, and deepen their relationships—we are rewriting the story of separation and dehumanization toward one that moves us closer to our shared humanity.  

If you want to prioritize relationship and make space for your people to connect, I facilitate team development programs and professional development trainings focused on re-centering our humanity in our work. Reach out to connect and schedule a call!