“Basically, there can only be two answers. One is to overcome separateness and find unity by regression to the state of unity that existed before awareness ever arose; this is, before man was born. The other answer is to be fully born, to develop one’s awareness, one’s reason, one’s capacity to love to such a point that one transcends one’s own egocentric involvement and arrives at a new harmony – at a new oneness with the world.”
– Erich Fromm
It’s amazing how the stories we tell ourselves perpetuate our own suffering and inability to fully participate in the world. When we think that we are in control or that we are the only ones with the answer, it doesn’t take long to discover that the world has no trouble making a mockery of us. Control and certainty are illusory. All we have is our own meager dependance on each other. The more we are related and understand one another, the safer we truly are, because we are better able to address the vagaries of the world if there are many eyes, hearts and brains making sense of a situation.
I think it’s a worthy effort and it makes things easier in the end.
Photo by 油姬