Citizenship: The Web of Dependence

Everyone goes through life always wanting to belong, but when you sit down and look around: you've belonged all along.  The life we live is the community around us --the people, places, and things all interacting together.  We don't always see this nor do we always apply it to the actions we do or the plans we anticipate to implement.  'You' are not solitary, but instead, part of 'we': your actions affect me, and my actions affect you.

I always somewhat grasped the concept, but never fully committed to it until recently.  Until I became President, I never saw the intricate web in which the chapter relies upon in order to operate successfully.  Each officer and member has an overlapping reliance upon another officer or member: when this bridge is disconnected and that duty falls through, the job is not accomplished.  Usually it falls back to me in order to follow through and complete something, and maybe that's something that my chapter needs to work on: being the person to step up and fill the void.

But even to a large scope, the actions that my chapter committes or a chapter within our Greek Community commits transcends into other communities in the University and Student Community.  If Lambda Chi were to haze its members, it would not only look bad from a personal/international chapter stand point from our International Headquarters, but also look bad for all of the other Fraternity and Sorority chapters at Ohio State: if one chapter hazes, wouldn't they all (an outsider may ask)? 

Community is everywhere.  It is as essential as the air we breath.  Without community, we wouldn't be 'we,' but just idle people without a cause or a purpose.  Community gives us this purpose, something to work towards, to accomplish, to improve upon.  Our interlocking faiths, passions, identities provide a web of support in order to progress towards the future, and to make that future a better place.




Quote of the Week:

We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

- Thomas Merton