When we feel connected to others, whether it be our family, friends, the community of people in our town, or the entire community of human beings, we can feel a bigger sense of self. We can become aware of our interconnection with each being in our community and then focus on the well-being of the entire community, rather than only on the individual self. In looking at the self in community, it is important to note that individual diversity does not need to be lost. Instead, each individual is celebrated as a valuable part of the whole. In the West, the sense of community in peoples' lives is often missing. We may live in places very far from where we were born, in individual houses, and with individual agendas in life. The individual striving to be self-sufficient is the ideal in industrial growth societies. Yet, in these societies, the rates of depression, feelings of isolation and general unhappiness are very prevalent. Even further, the very structure of this individualistic ideal creates a sense of not being able to communicate these feelings of sorrow with others. We become isolated in our despair and put up masks of being self-sufficient to others. This is not the way people traditionally lived and is certainly not the way that indigenous peoples live today. When we learn of other ways of living, we can question our goals in life and see if they are in alignment with the qualities we truly desire.

Malidoma Somé comes from a small village called Dano in West Africa. The people who live there are called the Dagara. At a young age, Malidoma Somé was taken by European missionaries from his community. He then returned to the Dagara in his teenage years. Somé walks his life path of bridging Western and indigenous cultures in understanding and sharing of wisdom. He brings the wisdom of his village to the West through workshops, classes, and writings. In the book The Healing Wisdom Of Africa (1998), Somé shares, "Whether they are raised in indigenous or modern culture, there are two things that people crave: the full realization of their innate gifts, and to have these gifts approved, acknowledged, and confirmed… A crisis of identity and purpose is an inner burning that is rarely extinguished by a visit to a career-planning office, by graduation from a prestigious school, or even by years in a successful career. It is a hollowness, a void that threatens to erase meaning in everything people do." (27)