We people–human beings–are created to need people in our lives. Even if you believe you can live without people, the truth is we all depend on other people for many things. In fact, each of us is only here because of a relationship between a man and woman, our parents. I believe it is possible to find some amount of joy on our own as we make discoveries and accomplish goals. But often the biggest things that really matter will require us to work with others. And for most people, we would feel loneliness, depression, or sorrow if we didn’t have anyone in our lives to share with. Living life alone, unnoticed, unrecognized, and feeling unaccepted would drag us down to a miserable existence.
We are made to be with people. We need them in so many ways. Because of this, we necessarily have relationships with other people. Some relationships we have are very deep, sharing many things together. Other essential relationships are only brief interactions between two or more people. Every time we interact with a bank teller or store employee, for example, we have a relationship experience. Each time we have these interactions with the same person, we accumulate relationship experiences that can develop into a significant relationship with that person.
Additionally, I think it’s important to remember that we also depend on many people whom we never see or interact with. The cars we drive and the streets we drive on were built by many people we don’t know. Our homes, our schools, our stores, and so on were built by many unknown people. Those stores, schools, etc. also operate only because of the many people who work in them. Many people work together to develop the many technologies that we use every day for communication, transportation, and convenience. And many other people continue to work to ensure that those systems keep serving us. We could go into many more examples of people we depend on. The big point here, though, is that we need to value people, generally, because people make our lives better.
So every time we meet a new person, we are meeting a person with value and worth, someone we might be able to have a good relationship with. But we need to be careful not to bring darkness into our interactions with people. If we mentally condemn them because of how they look or because they speak or act differently from ourselves, there’s some darkness entering in. Or if we speak rudely to them or act rudely, we are bringing darkness, not light.
Instead, every time we have an interaction with someone (a relationship experience), we should do our best to do it in ways that keep light present. Expressing appreciation, demonstrating acceptance, and looking for the good in the other person are a few ways to help keep light in a relationship.
On a wider scale, good relationships can foster good neighborhoods and communities. Imagine if everyone in our nation were to always strive to keep the light of caring in every relationship experience. I am convinced that it would bring about great improvements throughout our nation. I believe divisions would wane and crime against people would decline. Mental health concerns would diminish and more of us would feel happy in our lives. Who would not want these outcomes? This could perhaps be the beginning of a pursuit of happiness for the masses. And happier people can be more productive, which likely would generate more prosperity.
I strongly believe in this cause. That is why I started Lightward Bound. I see a vision of a day when we the people have brought into the U.S. enough light that we will drive out much of the darkness that drags down our people and our nation. Over the next few weeks (Sep. & Oct.) my posts will focus on human relationships and bringing light into them. I will include many of my own thoughts, but I will also include information from professional sources too.
Let’s live our lives in the pursuit of happiness for all!
Emil Therianos
Founder, Lightward Bound