Those Other People.... -

Other people…can’t live with them, but can we live without them?

You could move to the deepest part of the mountains and live in a tent – but someone else made the tent. OR a cottage…someone else made that too, or at least the tools you used to chop down the trees and build your own.

You could never go out. But then you rely on delivery…that is dependance on others as well.

You could achieve your aspirations alone in a vacuum of solitude, but would the achievement be fulfilling? What is the measure in which you are assessing your achievement? I bet it involves – you guessed it, other people.

“There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” – George Shinn

Philosophers, and society in general, realize that we are inherently social creatures and have a core need for others in our lives. For centuries we have contemplated, wrote about, and celebrated the interpersonal relationships of human beings. Answering such questions as…

…how we treat each other

…how we encourage each other

…how we thrive through interconnectedness

…how all this plays into creating our ‘best life’

These questions and more are at the center of philosophical thought.

It stands to reason then that if our concern is to identify how we are to create our ‘best life’, with one of the measuring sticks being the interconnectedness and interrelational activities we engage in with others, then our need for others is paramount to our happiness and therefore, should be of great concern to each of us.

Think about it this way –

Is a streak of 100 all net shots by yourself a basketball game? No
Is a book a bestseller without readers? No
Are you a leader/influencer if you have no followers or people that you have influenced? No
Can a light bulb shine without an external power source? No
Can you have a competitive edge without a competitor? No
Can you be born without others? No
Can you get educated without others? No

Our very creativity, our energy, and our desire to progress, to have success, is in direct correlation to other people. We need others to inspire us, to bring out the best in us and to be there to celebrate our achievements.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.” – Anais Nin

Others help us to uncover our hidden talents, and deeper wisdom we maybe didn’t know we had. Each person we connect with gives us the opportunity to explore our athletic side or our intellectual side, our wanderlust or our introspection side, our creative side and compassionate side, or even our wild side just to name a few.

Other people awaken and show us all the possibilities open to us. Their view of the world may spark or stimulate thoughts, feelings, and actions we would have never contemplated much less acted upon.

“Smart people learn from everything and everyone. Average people from their experiences. Stupid people already have all the answers.” – Socrates

Like it or not, we all need other people, it gets us outside ourselves. We all need help, we all can provide help, and without doing those two things we can not grow. We can not experience the wisdom of others. We can’t make our ‘best life’ or the ‘world a better place’ without working with others.

“The essence of life is to serve others and do good.” – Aristotle

Suffice it to say, we can’t work with others if we isolate, stand back, don’t participate, judge, or withhold our knowledge and wisdom. We must be willing to be vulnerable and giving if we want to have engaging community. We must be willing to spend the time, effort, and sometimes even money, to get involved – to be a part of a greater purpose.

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” Albert Einstein

Creating the “good life” our “best life” requires us to seek out the opportunities available to us, the connections we deserve to explore, the people that we can cross paths with to help us to define our own lives. Each of us has a responsibility to ourselves to define what the “best life” for us means, as individuals, and not what society places upon us as the accepted definition of a successful life.

Then reach out, connect and serve others, gain wisdom and help from others. Live in a world of interconnectedness and interrelational community so that we each may, individually, live our defined ‘best life’.