I rely on my family to guide me through life, both emotionally and physically; receive my love and radiate it back; nurture my investment in the world around me; help me in my journey of becoming a young man; and, of course, provide for me the things I could not otherwise obtain.

I rely on my closest friends to pick me up when I am down; remagnetize my moral compass when the needle wavers; laugh with me; let me know my outfit isn’t up to par; and steer me back down if I ever fly too close to the sun.

I rely on my fellow school newspaper staff members to act as a focus group for my ideas; temper my ideological discontent with societal malfeasance; and point out blunders as they inevitably infiltrate my prose.

I rely on the members of my basketball team to catch me on bad days and keep me up on good ones; push me to my limit as I push them to theirs; put in the work to reach our goals; and share their relative expertise where I am behind.

I rely on my high school to build a foundation for the rest of my academic and social life; force me to reconsider my assumptions and presuppositions; inform my decisions and my perspectives; and facilitate, not architect, my growth.

I rely on my city, Los Angeles, to bring the world to my backyard; show me the great expanse; document history as it passes; filter that narrative and tuck it away in parks, museums, coffee shops, neighborhoods; harbor people from the world over; and put up a home for those who need it most.

I rely on the world to moderate those dealing in excess; do right for those who have been wronged; keep in check wreckless human expansion; and be generous with what it bears: abundance, grandeur, and life.

The idea of community is an odd thing. Some insist on individualism as an accurate, or even the only, framework for humanity. By considering my dependence on the various communities of which I am a part, I imagine I would quickly find myself lost without the people and institutions that surround me. So, what motivates people to deny the fundamental nature of community in their lives? Perhaps steely, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps determination, a legitimate belief in the separation of humans from one another, or a repudiation of any sort of communal aid drives people to negate the role of community in their lives. But, to me, a subscription to individualism turns a blind eye to all forms of community and, consequently, threatens to intoxicate people with the notion that personal achievement can somehow be separated from community. In my life, nearly the opposite has been true: my community has produced what I am today and probably will continue to do the same. All I can hope to do is to give back.