“The eyes of others our prisons; their
thoughts our cages.”
Virginia Woolf
It is when we try
to grapple with another person’s intimate needs that we perceive how
incomprehensible, how wavering, and how misty the beings are that share with us
the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. Joseph Conrad thought that
people’s real lives are accorded to them in the thoughts of other people, by
reasons of respect or natural love. I wonder if we even have a higher life that
is truly apart from other people. Charles Cooley didn’t think so, for him it is
by imagining other people that our personality is built up; to be without the
power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson thought that other people are the lenses through which we read
our own minds. Each individual seeks those of different quality than his/her
own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, they seek other people;
Emerson called this the “otherest”.
Eric Hoffer adds to this by noting that we only love our neighbour as we love
ourselves simply because we tend to do unto them exactly as we do unto
ourselves. When hating, forgiving or sacrificing ourselves, we tend to do the
same to our neighbours.
May
you find the space wherein you define your own life, and keep in mind that the
manner in which you treat others, will be a reflection of not only the manner
in which you treat yourself, but more so, a reflection of the person you truly
are!
Our sense of worth; our sense of being,
through the eyes of others it can be seen.
Treat your neighbour therefore with appropriate dignity,
for the sake of both you and me.
through the eyes of others it can be seen.
Treat your neighbour therefore with appropriate dignity,
for the sake of both you and me.
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