No Man is an Island

I'd like to start this post by pointing out that I changed the color of my blog, and, though it is now green, I'd like you all to notice that it still follows the 'rose' theme. Please take note of the amount of thought I actually put into that. I just wanted to make sure everyone noticed...Thanks.

And now on to the contemplation.



I understand now why humans can't live all alone. No one can be the perfect hermit, living all their lives alone. We need others, because it is through our mutual experiences that we figure out who we are. Without other people and how we are treated by them, we don't really know how to feel about ourselves, how to handle ourselves. It's hard to put your own life into perspective without other people. Every adjective you come up with to describe yourself brings up some memory of something you did with another person. We don't know what kind of person we are until we are hurt by others; we can have no goals for ourselves until we think about the way others see us -- in short, the experiences, good and bad, we have with other people mold us into the person we are. We are fluid, without form until someone else imposes it on us. At the same time, we are the mold we are forcing on the people around us, all trying to fit into a puzzle that no one has the box top for: we can't see the big picture, know how we'll end up.

I don't believe anyone who says they don't care what other people think of them. This isn't true. What other people think of us, and our reaction to this image, create us. Gives us shape. We cannot have 'us' without 'them' and we can't be an 'us' alone -- we have to feel like other people relate, that we aren't an island.

If we are, we hate ourselves. We ask why we don't fit in. Where we belong.

No man is an island, for good reason. If he is anything like an island, he is a sandbar, changing with every passing wave, storm. He is the sandcastle on the island, changing with the ebb and flow of the world around him.