No Self Is An Island

By Kingsley Dennis

‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’ … John Donne

‘For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.’ … Erwin Schrodinger

self

 

Whether we like to admit it or not, we need other people. Other people in our lives help to teach us about who we are. Their actions and attitudes are like a mirror that reflects to us not only aspects of human behaviour but also facets of our social conditioning.

It is said that our most dominant feature as humans, and similarly our most ignored facet, is that when we are speaking about other people, or things, we are actually speaking about ourselves. Because of this blindness we actually need other people in order to project ourselves onto them. And then perhaps in some moment of clarity we will gain the insight that our descriptions of others are in fact descriptions of ourselves. It is through our social environment and connections that a light may eventually shine back at us.

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