I leave the house every day at a quarter to seven. As I step through the door, the cold morning air settles on my skin. I pause to pet the cat behind her ears as she observes the early movement from atop the garden wall. Crossing the gate, my body is met by a lovely combination of aromas: turned earth from the garden down the street, the soft freshness of dew-covered grass, and the warm french bread drifting from the bakery. Since the city removed our neighbourhood's only bus line last year, we all now face a fifteen-minute walk towards the city centre to catch the closest service. Now, I know the hollow sound my boots make on the loose flagstone, and the names of the birds calling from the trees above. My feet carry me past hedges glistening with dewdrops and windows reflecting the sunrise.

The old gardener is already bent amongst his roses, the curve of his spine a familiar shape against the golden light. His hand lifts, not high, just a slight unfurling of fingers. Further on, the faintest rustle of lace betrays a feline presence sneaking behind curtains. An orange cat watches the birds from someone’s bedroom. Nearby, a mother tightens her daughter’s pigtails before settling her into the car’s backseat as they head towards school. We have no grand conversations over these fences. Yet, this simple knowing that there is the gardener, there is the watcher of sparrows, there is the little girl, this holds me. By this, I mean, it says, without any words, that I am not an isolated individual, I belong within this particular humming of life.

This knowing stands against a brittle idea that I sometimes hear. The notion that we are each a self-contained world, needing nothing beyond our own borders. That love, or even basic sustenance, is a wellspring found only within ourselves. Tell me, what is that wellspring made of? To me, such a thought feels hollow. Consider the peach on your plate, its skin blushed and soft. Think of the hands that pruned the tree in winter, cracked and cold, the back that bent beneath the summer sun to gather it. Feel the mug warming your palm, shaped from earth by unknown fingers, fired in a kiln’s warmth tended by another. The very cloth against your skin was spun, woven, cut, sewn by a constellation of distant, but necessary hands. How, then, can we be sufficient unto ourselves, when we are built of borrowed breath and gifted labour?

To step outside the common life and declare ourselves whole is a forgetting. It ignores the rasp of the post slot closing. It forgets the scent of lilacs perfuming the whole street come April. It silences the distant ring of the bicycle bell from the open garage where repairs unfold. This quiet holding-up reveals itself in the gruff nod of the man stacking firewood, the intentional organisation of the pile. It lives in the smile of the woman behind the bakery counter, flour dusting her cheekbone like pollen. It echoes in the teenager shovelling a path before dawn, clearing a walk we both will tread, his breath pluming the cold air. These are not exceptional gestures, but they're the rain that slowly softens the earth. They are connections, nonetheless. The social contract we honour by showing up and being near each other.

As humans, we are made for connection. We breathe the same air, tread the same dust, feel the same sunlight warming our shoulders. This awareness brings the quiet recognition that the people you encounter are confiding in your presence, simply by including you in their world. To the gardener, I am the young woman who shared her surplus eggshell fertiliser. To the orange cat, I am the human whose heavy boots scatter birds to inconvenient branches, thwarting his hunt. To the little girl, I am the teacher of older children at her friend's school. There are people who’ve never heard my name, yet know I buy a chocolate croissant every Monday to stave off the week’s fatigue. Who hear the sound of my voice during the Saturday Mass readings. Whose daughters and sons first learnt to read and write inside my classroom.

So, I’ve grown to cherish my morning walks. I learn the habits of the terrier walked routinely at dawn, even his slow and deliberate sniffing. I notice the slant of a terrace roof when roses breathe their deepest perfume into the air. I greet the woman going for a run, the man behind me in the bakery queue. I make an effort to not mistake participation for intrusion. Attention is the beginning, Mary Oliver once wrote, and she was right. This knowing, this quiet nod of recognition, is the ground beneath our feet. It is how we practise belonging. Step by step, it reminds us that we are not meant to walk this world alone. Without it, it all would be so unbearably lonely. Even the ordinary shadows glimpsed sharing a meal behind a kitchen window hold the community against the seclusion. This is the gentleness of a collective.