No man is an island
No man is an island
No man is an island
No man stands alone
Each man’s joy is joy to me
Each man’s grief is my own.
We need one another
So I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend.
These beautiful lyrics by Joan Baez sum up the beauty of community. One can’t go through life even imagining that one is all alone. Even for those who claim to be self-made individuals, they too wouldn’t have got there had it not been for the invisible blessings of well-wishers guiding their paths. In our deepest moments of despair, we tend to think that we have been abandoned. But who knows whose life you might have touched like the lightest flutter of butterfly wings? whose day you might unknowingly brightened with a cheerful ‘Kya dost/bhai/chele?’
In a world with rapidly disappearing boundaries, instant connectivity, relationship apps, break-up apps, food apps, sleep apps…. apps for every conceivable interaction known to man, the most important app is missing – the 3 C app – Community, connection and Conversation.
Your problems are similar to so many who have either gone through, are going through and at some point in the future will go through them. Build a group of different personalities and attitudes.. you will learn by observing the diversity of the group and their approach to various situations. That’s the same diversity that built our nation.
Know your strengths. Surround yourself with people who see the same strengths in you. It is an exercise in futility trying to explain yourself to a person who sees somethng totally different in you and cannot reconcile to your thoughts.
Push yourself to greater lengths than you thought you could handle. The human mind tends to achieve what it believes and then conceives. This is self-fulfilling whether negative or positive. What would you prefer to do?