On Sunday morning, after a week of exhaustion, the man got up and picked up his newspaper, he was going to lie around all day and be lazy. He had spent a whole week dreaming of this day. While he was still thinking about it, his mischievous little son came running. He asked when they were going to the park, because he had promised him beforehand. But he never wanted to go out, so he had to make an excuse.

Then a promotional world map from the newspaper caught his eye. First he tore the world map into small pieces and handed it to his son:

"If you can fix this map, I will take you to the park!" He said.

Then he thought and felt happy. After all, even the best geography professor would not be able to fix this map until the evening.

Not ten minutes later, the boy came running to his father:

"Daddy, I fixed the map, now we can go to the park!" At first the man could not believe it and asked to see it. When he saw it, he was amazed and asked his son how he had done it. The boy gave an incredible answer:

"The map you gave me had a picture of a person on the back. When I corrected the human, the world corrected itself."

Now let us imagine that we are stranded on a deserted island. Now we know and are sure that we will never get off and that we will stay there forever. There is not a single human being left in the world except us. And a genie comes out of the lamada and says that he will fulfill all our desires and promises us a future of great beauty... Would you find it attractive? What would be your answer?

Yes, the vast majority of people like you and me would say no. Because at the very center of our existence is the presence of other people and at the very center of what we call "life" is other people. Such scenarios even make human beings uneasy.

What makes the adventure of life meaningful is the presence of other people, for better or worse, after satisfying our material needs and basic needs such as food, drink and shelter.

We spend our lives interacting with other people. Without their presence, there would be no need to work, no need to earn money and nothing that makes life meaningful.

Even the activities we do when we are alone, such as reading books, listening to music, watching television, bear the traces of other people's labor and bring us into their world...

In a nutshell, it is the presence of others that influences the way we live our lives and behave. Alone or not, they are the cause of our thoughts and behaviors, perceptions and expectations everywhere.

What we do, think, feel and say is meaningful when other people are present.

Being in a relationship, being accepted and valued, trusting, being trusted, seeing our self as valuable are among our most basic psychological needs.

Our need to love, to be loved, to belong, to connect, to be connected is so great that experts now agree that chronic loneliness causes physical and mental illnesses.

Feeling rejected, excluded and alone always brings sadness and pain. We are happy when we receive compliments and unhappy when we are criticized.

Our greatest effort on the path of "life" is based on seeing our self as valuable and realizing ourselves.

In short; our existence is very valuable! Our desire to see "I" and "We" as valuable is the most important part of our reality.

As much as it is impossible for us to become lonely for "life"...

It would be just as wrong for us to "otherize".

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber