…Because We Are

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As I neared the final stages of editing my dissertation, I found myself unexpectedly overwhelmed—not by the work itself, but by gratitude. I became increasingly aware that this project, and indeed my life, was the fruit of countless relationships. So many people had taught me, challenged me, encouraged me, cared for me, blessed me, dared me, and loved me into becoming who I was.

Not only during those years of doctoral study, but across a lifetime.

During that season, I began gathering photographs of family, friends, teachers, theologians, pastors, therapists, spiritual directors, youth leaders, mentors, ancestors, and companions—people whose lives had shaped my own. I assembled those images into the mosaic you see here as a small expression of a much larger truth: none of us becomes ourselves alone.

Around that same time, I was introduced to the South African philosophy of Ubuntu, with its profound affirmation of our shared humanity: “I am because we are.” More than a slogan, Ubuntu names a way of understanding personhood itself—that our lives are always formed in relationship, and that our flourishing is inseparable from the flourishing of others.

As Michael Onyebuchi Eze writes:

“A person is a person through other people’ strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.”

Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa

Archbishop Desmond Tutu described it this way:

“A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.”

DESMOND Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness

The following photos – in no particular order – are just some of the many people and communities who are helping me grow more open and available, more affirming of others, etc. I am because of y’all… and I am so grateful.

Peace, dwight