Vivian VanDyke
The first semester of freshman year, I lived in an apartment with my high school friends, and I was involved in a really toxic relationship. I exposed the most vulnerable parts of myself to people I trusted and cared about most, and I was betrayed. I realized that the people I had surrounded myself with didn't actually care about my well-being and were detrimental to my mental health, so I packed up and left. This is what I wish I could have told my past self as she was learning to let go and start over:
Dear Vivian,
I know it is difficult right now. Flourishing seems far out of reach. You ask yourself how you have gotten to this point. You feel like your decision was reactive and reckless, and sometimes you have regrets; other times you feel ashamed for not leaving sooner. You remember the times you were flourishing, and you want to get back to that. I assure you, you will. You took the first step, and you did what needed to be done. It is hard to start over. You gave up connection, a sense of belonging, and interdependence. It is only natural that this would be painful. Humans need these things.
We are embodied, enacted, emergent, and embedded beings. We are embodied through multiple, overlapping systems, none of which can exist without the others due to operational closure. Operational closure means that all the processes that constitute the system are generated and sustained by other processes within a network of other systems (Dunne 2026). Your friends were a system that connected to many other systems that embodied you, so when you detached from them, other systems became dysfunctional, and new systems became harder to generate. They were heavily integrated into your “UW-Madison system,” so without them, that system essentially collapsed.
Just as the systems that constitute us are embedded in other, larger systems, each of us is also an embedded component in the larger systems we are a part of. Mere survival is impossible without the systems in which we are embedded, so when systems are ripped away, it is devastating, especially when those systems contributed largely to your sense of belonging. So how do you rebuild these systems? How do you find connection, belonging, and interdependence again? I wish I could say it was easy, but you already know it takes trial and error, repeated failure, and rejection. I am so proud of your resilience so far. Keep trying, and I promise it will pay off.
In the meantime, there are other aspects of flourishing you can work on –aspects you have probably neglected for some time. The story you once told about yourself and the narrative universe you once operated in has changed. The rules have been broken. What felt impossible has now happened. You aren't restricted by that narrative anymore. This is your opportunity to rewrite the rules and redefine what is possible. You can chase dreams without anyone holding you back. This is YOUR story now. Your life doesn’t have to revolve around her anymore. Think about your values. Let them guide you and give you direction. You will find yourself again.
If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: look for awe. Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world (Dunne 2026). Awe is all around you. You can look for it in Dacher Keltner's eight wonders of life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality, life and death, and epiphanies. New friendships will come eventually, but you can also experience connection through collective effervescence. Just being around and with people -even strangers- can bring you joy and energy. If you can’t find awe in the presence of other people, turn to nature. Find inspiration in the way life persists through the cold winter. The flowers will return in the spring, and so will you.
Love, Your Future Self
Hello past Vivian,
I've had challenges surrounding friendships before, and I know how hard it is to let go of the social support you are familiar with. To flourish, we must rely on community and social groups, however, I am proud that past Vivan was able to become aware that she surrounded herself with people who were hindering her chance to do so. One concept from our class that relates to your experience is that humans have an intrinsic potential for positive change. Even though leaving that environment felt like a loss of connection and belonging, it also created the conditions for growth. This connects directly to neuroplasticity, the idea that we can train the mind and train the brain. By stepping away from a toxic system, you were actually opening the possibility for new relationships and ways of thinking to form over time. Your discussion of losing connection and feeling alone exhibits a solo myth. As humans, we can’t flourish completely on our own, and your experience shows how painful it is when systems of belonging are disrupted. Your advice about awe is also really meaningful and is tied with attention and awareness. In a time when your attention could easily be captured by negative thoughts or loss, intentionally seeking awe shifts your focus toward experiences that are meaningful and expansive. This relates to the idea that what we pay attention to shapes our experience, and by directing attention toward awe, you are actively creating opportunities for connection, even outside of close relationships. The mention of collective effervescence is especially important because it shows that belonging doesn’t always require deep personal bonds but rather sometimes just being part of a shared human experience can restore a sense of connection. Although we all struggle with our own issues, it's important to take care of one another. Life goes by fast, lets take a moment to slow it down and help out a peer or go on a walk during sunset. These moments of awe can really help your own well-being along with others around you.
Ava Wubbolding
Hi past Vivian,
I can relate to struggling with friendships and feeling lost without social support. I agree with ‘current’ Vivian and how as soon as one system starts crumbling, our life seems like it is about to fall apart. As Hazel Markus once said “you can’t be a self by yourself.” Having that social support is a big aspect of one's narrative self and how you view yourself, so I understand why it might've felt isolating when you lost your friendships. According to Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort, SBT suggests “that proximity to social resources decreases the cost of climbing both the literal and figurative hills we face, because the brain construes social resources as bioenergetic resources, much like oxygen or glucose.” (Coan, Sbarra, 2015, p.2) Social support is crucial for survival but it is important to remember that you are the author of your narrative story and there are so many other systems to fall back on. In Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, you are at the center of your system and then there's a micro, meso, exo, and macrosystem, which all work together creating interdependence. Every system is embedded within a larger system. If one system fails, it is important to remember that there are other people within your system that can be there for support.
While you are working on finding those support systems, there are other ways to feel connection even if it is not with human beings. Like ‘current’ Vivian said, look for the “awe” in life. Nature can bring so much joy to your life which can make you feel a connection to the world. Take walks along the Lakeshore path or down State street and look for the beauty in nature which can help bring back that connection to UW-Madison. Another one of the eight wonders of life is moral beauty. According to Eight Wonders of Life by Dacher Keltner, Moral beauty is “marked by a purity and goodness of intention and action” (Keltner, p. 7).
For anyone reading this, be the moral beauty that others see. Give food or money to the homeless, help those less fortunate, and put in effort to help the world. Healing others can also be beneficial to healing yourself. I hope past Vivian and others reading this find the beauty in life because it is always out there, you might just have to look deeper to discover it.
Natalie Cohen