“The older you get, Alana, you’ll begin to see that we are all connected.” My surrogate parents from Ann Arbor took me to dinner last month at Chartreuse in Detroit (you must try the scallops baked into cornbread), and it turned into a pseudo professional and personal development session. I don’t know what I expected – they’re a recently retired psychiatrist and pathologist, so the pathology of my psyche quickly revealed itself.

I told them of my fear of taking risks and what I view as my strengths. I told them of my tendency to put the good of the whole above myself. The commons have always been my investment portfolio, it seems. But I interrogate this feeling often. I asked them if they think this devotion to a better “whole” could be endangering my personal growth.

One of capitalism’s main tenets is that competition fuels creativity and innovation. Yet, Marcia’s statement that we are all connected seems to support the notion that our tiny individual actions are absorbed and reflected by the entire community. After attending graduate school for the last two years, my competitive nature took over without even realizing it. But I felt my creativity was often siphoned away to the bottom of a vat of academic jargon and overthinking. I felt less communal and less creative.

Since I moved to Detroit, I have been struck by something that, until yesterday, I haven’t been able to name. What finally dawned on me is that people here are so much more collaborative than any other place I have worked or lived. Important change makers in Detroit have welcomed me to their table to help solve some of the remaining complex issues—the Amazon Headquarters proposal, traffic management issues Downtown, stormwater management for Downtown sidewalks, increased homelessness.

I am learning that competition subsides and creativity prospers with collaboration and connectedness and concern for the commons over self. True personal and professional growth are just a handshake away.