We Were Never Meant to Be Complete

On why individualism is collapsing, how we became strangers to each other and the need to build communities of complementary beings.

Something has broken - not only within me, but in the landscape I move through. The world I once could mirror myself in, find comfort in, and lean my future against no longer feels like home. It is not just the news, or the reports about the climate, the economy, or politics. It is something deeper - a sense that the very foundation has cracked. That the shared agreements holding reality together no longer apply.

We speak past each other, as if we no longer share the same reality. What I see and cannot unsee seems invisible to others. And the world most people still seem to live in - with its calm sense of safety and faith in the future - feels like a time I no longer belong to.

The conversations - public, professional, private - no longer hold. When societies decay, this is where it begins: in relationships. Trust erodes, language hardens, resonance fades. Civilisations do not first show signs of collapse in their economies or political systems, but in their capacity for empathy. When we no longer feel with each other, when we stop listening, when dialogue turns into posturing - then the system has lost its soul.

This is why the way we relate to one another is not a private matter. It is the foundation itself - and we need to start treating it as such.

Relationships running empty

And now, when we need one another the most, we drift apart. I often hear people speak about the pain of no longer feeling close to those once nearest to them. About insights that have not yet reached the people they love - creating cracks and friction. About not being able to express what feels most important - because it is met with silence, defensiveness, or polite distance. The loneliness of standing in what once felt like closeness, realising that the conversation has thinned and the depth is gone.

We find ourselves participating in lives we have tried to leave behind - dinners where no one mentions what is happening, trips as if nothing were collapsing, conversations that stay at the surface because no one has the strength to go deeper. The talk becomes parallel monologues instead of true encounters. We speak of the same things, but from different realities. The words are the same, but their meanings have split apart.

How do you communicate that? How do you say: “I love you, but I can no longer be who I was - and the person I am becoming seems to frighten you”? How do we navigate when worldviews begin to diverge? When the way we understand reality is no longer shared with those we once moved in rhythm with?

Some relationships sustain the old order. They ask you to play a part, to behave a certain way, not to go too far, not to ask the harder questions. And the grief becomes double - not only for the relationship as it was, but for the version of yourself that could exist within it.

So we start searching - for new spaces where we can feel seen, where others too recognise what is unfolding, where we can make sense of it together. And there we stand - with one foot in the old relationships that sustain who we were, and one in the new, where we might begin to become whole again.

We become through others

For centuries, we have built a culture around the autonomous human being - the one who can manage alone, who needs no one, who is whole in themselves. We have celebrated individuality as freedom, independence as strength, and self-sufficiency as maturity. But that is a lie - or at least a crude simplification. We have overvalued the individual and undervalued the collective.

We are not separate entities. We are parts of larger, often invisible constellations. We do not exist in a vacuum - we take shape through the relationships we inhabit. Where we place ourselves and how we relate determines who we become, in that moment. You are one person with your parents, another with your partner, a third at work, a fourth with a friend. That is not being false or fragmented - it is human nature. We are relational beings. We mirror each other. We create each other.

Hermann Hesse wrote: “In truth, not even the most naïve ego is a unity, but a thousandfold multitude, a miniature starry sky, a chaos of forms, stages and states, inheritances and possibilities.”

Sometimes we are whole and radiant; in other contexts, we are incomplete - or even harmful to ourselves and others. What you see in me is the person I become. Who I am in relation to determines how I perceive myself - and what I then do or fail to do.

Some relationships help us unfold. Others make us shrink. Some awaken the best in us - others reinforce the worst. This does not mean the other person is good or bad - it means that the dynamic between us creates a field, an atmosphere, a possible version of who I can be. This is not mysticism - it is how relational systems work. We regulate one another emotionally. We affect each other’s nervous systems. One person’s presence can calm you - or trigger your stress response. The dynamics of a group can help you think more clearly - or cloud your mind entirely.

Perhaps we are not even individuals - not fully. Perhaps we are parts of something larger - constellations, organisms, ecosystems - that breathe through us.

So instead of striving to become whole as individuals, we need to begin striving to become whole as groups.

Archetypes

Evolution did not shape us to be alike - but to be complementary. Not as isolated individuals, but as parts of small, cognitively diverse groups. We survived not because everyone could do everything, but because different people carried different functions - and together became something greater than the sum of their parts.

There is an ancient wisdom in this - something we instinctively long for but that modern individualism has reasoned away. We have words for it - diversity, group dynamics, self-help - but we rarely let it guide us. We do not go deep enough. Workplaces experiment with personality tests and typologies like Myers-Briggs - imperfect but pointing in the right direction - yet when the results come back, they are quickly sacrificed for what is seen as more important: efficiency, speed, uniformity.

If you want to build something fast, with a clear goal, sameness can be an advantage. Everyone speaks the same language, moves at the same pace, makes the same instinctive decisions. But from day one, you also build in fragility. When crisis hits - when the unexpected happens - the group lacks the perspectives it needs to survive.

The pathfinder who sees far ahead.
The weaver who binds things together when all seems to fall apart.
The caretaker who notices when someone is struggling.
The realist who says “wait a minute” when everyone else rushes forward.
The visionary who dreams when others have lost hope.
The rebel who questions what seems self-evident.
The craftsperson who gets things done.
The leader who keeps direction when no one knows where to go.

And yet, in our modern society, we are expected to be all of this at once - complete, self-contained, whole individuals. Capable, independent, balanced. As if each of us should be able to lead and follow, create and build, nurture and challenge, see the whole and manage the details.

It is not only unreasonable - it is impossible.

The search

Now, as the world no longer feels familiar and we begin to falter, we instinctively reach out to one another. We look for those who see what we see - who understand - who feel the same unease, the same cracks. And we find them, sometimes. But even here, a new problem arises.

It is not unlikely that many of those who sense the new patterns of our time, who feel the existential threat most deeply and want to act, belong to the same archetype: the pathfinders. The ones who, in ancient communities, read the signs in the landscape - changes in weather, danger, transformation - but who today have turned their lives toward identifying trends, formulating new ideas, innovating, communicating, breaking new ground.

So what we often find when we search - are other pathfinders. We gather in networks, in communities where we agree with each other, feel the same frustration, point in the same direction. And it is wonderful. To finally be seen. To stop explaining. To speak with people who do not stare blankly when you say what you see.

But a group of pathfinders rarely forms a whole. They share the same strengths - but also the same weaknesses. They see far, but sometimes carry poorly. They dream, initiate, challenge - but lack grounding, the ability to stay, to endure. They risk burning out - or burning each other out. In the worst case, echo chambers form: small homogeneous fields where ideas grow ever more extreme, and ever further from reality.

To build something that lasts requires something else: complementarity. But how do we get there, when we have learned to seek confirmation instead of balance? How do we create organic groups in a time when most roles are already written for us?

We have stepped into scripts we did not always choose ourselves: daughter, colleague, partner, leader. Roles that come with expectations, positions, rehearsed behaviours. We fill functions in systems drawn long before we were born - family systems, organisational charts, social hierarchies.

Modern organisations - and modern families - often function more like square cages than living organisms. They are designed for control, not for life. For predictability, not for movement. For roles, not for relationships.

And as long as we build our groups like machines - with interchangeable parts, standardised processes, and measurable outcomes - we will continue to feel lonely, even among people who understand us.

We have built our lives like grids, not like trees. We wear our roles like uniforms - not as chosen expressions, but as inherited ones. And when we try to create community, we often begin from position - not from relation.

Local and sustaining relationships

Maybe this is where we begin - not by searching for perfect relationships, but by noticing the ones that truly carry us.

Look around. What is close by? Are there people who seem to move in the same direction - not necessarily with the same words or methods, but with the same longing for something else? And if not - which new relationships need space to grow?

It is not about relationships that always affirm you, but about relationships that can meet you. That see you. Where presence matters more than perfection, and mutuality weighs more than performance. Relationships honest enough to hold conflict without breaking the bond.

To see and work with relationship deeply is to pause and really feel - which connections give energy, and which drain it? It is something we have heard for decades in the world of self-help, but usually with the goal of becoming successful or fulfilled. So what happens if we shift that goal - to finding alternative ways of living? To seeing one another for the unique contributions we each bring from that perspective?

Of course, it is not always simple. Sometimes it is not the relationship that drains you - but something in you that is being awakened. An old fear. A familiar pattern. Then the question becomes: is it the relationship that does not work, or an inner system that wants to be seen? Either way - nurture the connections that carry life, even when they require patience, presence, and listening.

And perhaps it is the everyday relationships that hold the longest. The ones with a child. An elder. A neighbour. An animal. The cashier. The tree you pass each day. What happens there grounds you. Reminds you that you are not only a thought or a longing - you are also a body in a place, a face in a shared world.

Resilience is not built in large networks of like-minded people. It is built in small, recurring meetings with difference. In recognition despite divergence. In knowing that someone sees you - and in seeing someone back. In being part of something that works not despite our differences - but because of them.

Relationship with place and the more-than-human

Relationship is not only something that happens between people. It also lives in our connection to the place we inhabit - the ground we walk on, the wind, the weather, the turning of the seasons. The food we eat. The birds that pass by. The things that surround us. But we have forgotten how to live in contact with the more-than-human world. Perhaps it happened when we began to call nature “resources”. Perhaps when we moved into climate-controlled rooms. Perhaps when food lost its place and gained a price instead. We stopped listening. We began to live on top of the earth, instead of with it.

To live in relationship is to live with. To see the landscape as a participant, not a backdrop. To feel that the place also feels you. To care for the things around you. To tend gently. To see the years and the stories carried in every object.

And perhaps it is here - in our relationship with the more-than-human - that we can learn something essential about reciprocity. The tree does not take more than it needs. The bird does not demand that you be a certain way. The ground gives and takes in rhythms that cannot be measured by performance - the rush of summer, the rest of winter, the leap of spring, the return of autumn. There is a kind of honesty in these relationships. A clarity. They teach us to rest without guilt, to give without counting, to receive without shame. They remind us that rhythm is not inefficiency - it is life’s own design.

And maybe they remind us of something we have forgotten - that we were never separate. That the boundary between me and the world has always been porous. That we do not stand outside the whole - we carry it within us. We are part of something that breathes through us.

What happens between words

Much of what matters in a relationship happens between words. The silence. The pause. The glance that turns away - or stays. It is the grammar of relationship, the part that truly speaks. We have learned to talk fast, efficiently, convincingly - yet we are slowly losing the ability to speak truthfully. To say what is difficult. To stay with what feels uncomfortable. To be present without having a ready answer.

To be in relationship requires that we reclaim another kind of language - one that does not just inform, but connects.

Perhaps it begins with how we speak to ourselves. How we meet our own vulnerability, tiredness, longing. If you cannot listen to your own body - how will you hear someone else’s? If you cannot hold your own complexity - how will you hold the complexity of a relationship?

Your relationship with yourself sets the depth of all other relationships - like a base note that decides the frequency on which you can meet others. To stop trying to be everything, and instead become something well. In this time of polarization, when relationships harden, it becomes an act of quiet resistance to stay in conversation where you do not agree. To choose presence when everything around you calls for speed. To listen to understand, not to convince.

A future of reciprocity

We stand at a threshold. Old relationships are falling apart. Conversations are thinning. The world no longer feels familiar. Many of us are searching for new circles, yet mostly find other seekers - not whole groups. But perhaps this in-between space is an opening.

If we stop trying to be complete on our own. If we stop searching for those who are exactly like us. If we dare to build groups of complementary beings instead of like-minded ones - something new can emerge. Then the pathfinder no longer needs to carry everything alone, but can lean on the guardian who sees what they miss. The creator can dream big because the builder makes it real. The reformer can challenge because the weaver holds it all together. We can stop measuring one another by performance and instead ask: What awakens in me when I am with you? What becomes possible together that was never possible alone?

The old society was built on contracts - written, regulated, legal. But a living society is built on relationships that adjust through presence, not control. Where structure is created through trust - not the other way around.

Perhaps this is where transition truly begins. Not in ideas or strategies - but in our willingness to stay in contact, even when it hurts. In groups that dare to be incomplete together, and through that, become whole. In relationships where we are not filled by each other but shaped through each other. In choosing not to flee what rubs and irritates, but to let it show us the systems we carry.

And perhaps, before anything else, it begins in understanding that we were never meant to make it on our own. That the longing for belonging is not weakness, but wisdom. That to become whole does not mean to become complete - it means to find your place among others.

Relationship is not just a tool for understanding the world. It is the world. And we come into being through it - if only we dare.

About this essay
We’re facing challenges that cannot be solved with the same logic that created them. In exploring our vast “knowing–doing gap,” I’m developing a tool to help us see our inner and outer systems – and the friction between them. Like a compass, it offers a set of lenses or directions that can be explored individually or together.

Relation is the third of these lenses. Here you can find the first two - Rythm and Position.

You can subscribe to follow this work, or explore it through your own life and context by joining 100 Days.

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For more writing from the edge where an old world fades and a flickering new one begins – visit WEAVE.

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