Yes, You Need Other People

This is something that I didn't grasp for a long time.

           These past few years, as I've worked through and come to some sort of decorum with issues related to low self-love and self-worth,  I've accepted that surviving and thriving in this world requires having others in my life. The love of other people, the support of other people, the sense of belonging to other people in a variety of capacities: these are all essential to our well being as humans.

          

           Despite having confidants, friends and family to support me many times I failed to understand that it was ok to rely on others when there were hard times that overwhelmed me.

So much of what I read, what I learned from media and the individualistic culture that dominates our world was that you could never rely on others. You always had to stand alone. You always had to be able to cope with what life gave you. You could never share dark times with others or expect others to help you. Perhaps the message I heard the most though was you had to be enough for you. Your own sense of self worth was what would carry you through.

These days, I tend to see this as misguided if not flat out wrong. None of us by ourselves are enough to sustain us through life. I mean that materially and emotionally.

Humans are highly social creatures. We are not solitary creatures like tigers and sharks. As Yuval Harari writes in Sapiens:

'A colt can trot, shortly after birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education.'

The term 'sink or swim' is applied to people striking out on their own to make it in life. Yet if our species was really geared towards that kind of existence, we would give our children up to nature like sharks do. We wouldn't bothered to raise our kids at all we'd leave them to forage on their own and they would thrive.

As we all know though, leave a human newborn alone by itself in the wild and it's almost certain to die.

We need our parents and are families to look after us. Sometimes that sustenance protection and education from our caregivers can go (to one extent to another) our whole lives.

But it's not just our parents or family we're dependent on. Most of you reading this have a smart phone, a device you probably had no part in manufacturing. You also didn't create it nor did you come with the idea for it the first place.

At a more basic level most of you reading this rely on a system of food distribution network to keep yourselves fed. You rely on electricity companies to keep your home powered and on government pipes to get clean water.

Sure there are some survivalists and hermits that go the extra step of withdrawing into the wilderness. But if humans beings were wired for that kind of existence there wouldn't be over seven billion of us and we wouldn't be living in towns or cities. In fact we probably wouldn't have the kinds of technology and innovations that allow us to live and thrive.

Humanity's strength has always been our capacity to cooperate with one another. We have built societies where we can work together and come up with solutions that are for the common good of our communities. Any time we've thrived its been because we were lifting others up.

It's ironic that we live in an age where so many (especially in the first world) are dependent on others materially yet expect our emotional and psychological needs to be met entirely by ourselves.

Again if that was the case we wouldn't socialize or bond nearly as much as we do. 

We wouldn't even need to confide in any friend or loved one about personal doubts and insecurities because...those insecurities just wouldn't be there.

 We wouldn't have the rich body of art and literature that comes from the disappointments, heartaches and tragedies that come when we fail at love, friendship or other relationships.

We wouldn't have record numbers of young people struggling with mental illnesses. We wouldn't have so many people in our rich first world societies struggling with a sense of loneliness and a lack of belonging.

Whether we really want to admit it or not (and mostly we don't) we are emotionally vulnerable at many, many points in our lives. Yes, we can learn to improve our sense of self-worth and self-love. I definitely have. But this doesn't mean that we can expect ourselves and others of ever reaching a point where we can be 100% secure 100% of the time.

Sometimes were all as weak as infants and the strong fronts, the ones we put up to others to make ourselves seem so inhuman, stop us from having the breakdowns we need in order to put ourselves back together in a better way. 

And as we put ourselves back together, often we'll need someone or many someones to help us know where to fit those pieces in. 

Being an A-Hole is Not a Good Thing

One night, while I was out at a bar with a group of colleagues, someone in our crowd started texting a man she was seeing.

Someone else in the group, who knew this woman better than I did, probed her about why she was talking to said man. It turned out he was married and she had found this out a few weeks earlier.

Her friend's rebuff made her defensive. She'd also had a few drinks so it wasn't a surprise that she snapped at him.

Her reply (I'm paraphrasing as I'd also had a few that night) was along the lines of:

'Yeah, I know he's an asshole but at least he's not a pushover.'

Something about this exchange has stuck with me since I overheard it two years ago. The woman in this story was not, in my experience, a bad person. She was very generous and actually helped me out during a sever depressive episode.

I don't think she's horrible. To me this sentiment 'It's better to be an asshole than...' is just a very sad reflection of modern culture.

We've somehow accepted that being a complete douche-nozzle to the people around you reflects strength. A-holeness is a virtue, something to strive for. Being the biggest middle finger to people you disagree with or don't get along with is a prized trait in romance, media and politics. We don't appreciate someone who can bridge divides or resolve problems. We adore the ego-maniacs who step on everyone around them as they climb the ladder.

There's a number of reasons why a man like Donald Trump has a very solid chance of being the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. And while I don't think his belligerent dickishness is the only cause of his rise, it's certainly a major part of it.

It's not a stretch for anyone listening to Trump or the people who adore him, that 'telling it like it is' equates to saying the most hateful things you can just to make the person on the other side angry and hurt.

Yet Trump is just the most prominent example of how much we value A-holes in our society. Reality shows abound with awful people doing awful things to each other. Some of the best fictional TV shows star narcissistic characters, who though enjoyable to watch, also do horrible things to others.

And I think that's why we love A-holes. They're entertaining and often very driven. I get the appeal of someone so outrageously full of themselves that they don't (appear) to care what other people think and go after their goals.

I doubt though, if push came to shove, any of us would say that we'd enjoy working for a boss like Trump or having a friend like Kanye West. Most people would also get pretty sick of a boyfriend of girlfriend sleeping around or breaking their promises to us.

That's because the A-holes biggest problem is that they rarely benefit others around them. They use people and discard them and very often their self-centerdness is not a sign of strength but an indication that they need to overcompensate for their insecurity.

Yet still too many people fall for their deceptions only to realize later how much they regretted wasting their time on someone who couldn't have cared less about them. 

Don't Wait Until They're Gone

Celebrity deaths have been plentiful these past four months.

David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince and other notables have left their fans and admirers behind. Each death results in an outpouring of sad tweets and tribute statuses on social media. Other people in the limelight devote a few minutes to remembering their life and legacy.

I've been a part of this reaction a few times in the last few years. I was particularly struck when Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams passed away in quick succession.

Yet recently, as I saw my newsfeed fill up with tributes for Prince I started to wonder about this familiar cycle of mourning that we the public engage in and what it says about us.

I don't doubt the sincerity of many people who share mournful statuses about how much a notable artist touched their lives. As I said, I've done that myself (most recently with Alan Rickman)

There is a part of me though that wonders why we people wait until this person we cared for so much is gone before expressing how much they meant to us.   

Wouldn't they have appreciated this outpouring of love and gratitude while they were still around to enjoy it?

I think this can be applied not just to celebrities but to our loved ones in general. We all have people who have touched us and who we have touched in return. Once more, we live in an age where technology allows us to reach out and communicate with these people in just a few moments. It's never been easier to send a loving message to an old friend, send an appreciative text or make a call.

For all the idealistic images floating around Instagram and Facebook expressing how important it is to value people over status or possessions, I wonder if most of us practice what we share as well as we could.

All too often, the praise and love we shower on another person comes after they can no longer see it, feel it or read it.

There are a million reasons (some better than others) for why we don't tell others what they mean to us. Maybe we fear being vulnerable, maybe we think we're too busy or consumed by our own problems. Maybe it's too easy to ignore that email or text. Maybe you think that your actions convey your true feelings and that's enough.

I understand all of that. I've given myself these reasons as well. Yet somehow I don't think any of them can truly hold up.

At the end of the day, we can vanish from life at any point. No matter how young or healthy we might be, we could be gone. That's the truth. We should take anyone we know and love for granted. So tell those precious to you just how amazing they are. It may be the last chance you get.