"...One night on my porch, a friend and I spoke of past lovers and the idea of desiring a single forever-relationship.

          She said, 'I think the purpose of relationships is to find someone whose creativities and sensitivities play off of yours in a way that you make each other into more flourishing people.'

          Her words made me think of my past more critically, and also of the present. Of how often I've found myself or witnessed friends in relationships that are so clearly unhealthy, so emotionally exhausting and consuming, and, taken to its most basic level, far more stifling than mutually enriching.

          I wonder what shortsightedness has occurred that we can be more motivated by convenience, distraction or habit than by the desire to learn to develop and act in ways that contribute to the health of those around us.

          How much of urbanism, of economies, of something so basic as the gathering and preparing of food, occurs in a way that benefits, rather than exploits, those other communities we share the world with? Is it fair to refer to these separate species, forests, bodies of water as other communities? Or is that revealing our perceived independence from what, in total, forms simply our community..."