There’s no meaningful existence without exchange.

This sentence has been ringing over and over in my head for the last couple of weeks and I just can’t let it go.

What I usually do when things like that happen is to sit and write but I chose not to yield to my obvious coping tactics this time around. I slept on it. I mumbled it to myself and asked myself if, under any other circumstance, such thought would have crept into my head the way this one did. I asked myself if I wasn’t being simply led to believe that the human, like any other living thing sharing this Earth, is not capable of evolving, creating and developing anything on his own.

When I say “on his own” I really mean “for nobody, with no realization of how relationships are the links between the individual and his or her achievements”.  I asked myself a very simple question that, in my humble opinion, people should ask themselves more often: would I be one third of who I am if I didn’t live to exchange thoughts on what I love, think, question with others while serving as I possible can, be it with the excuse of building a family, a career or whatever in the presence and FOR others as much as I think I do it solely for myself?

Wow. What a complicated question. Let’s rephrase it: would I be me if others were not around?

The simple answer is: no.

Would I be less of whom I am, someone intrinsically complicated and unique just like every human is, if I did not relate to others and had spent my whole existence away from any human contact or exchange? Yes.

What I am saying is that while in pursuit of who you are, you bump into what others are. While looking for a way to bring everyone to the same level, you fail to realize how important it is to be unique, different and special: because everyone is just as special, in different ways. After all, the word special simply means something “unusual, uncommon, particular”.

The realm of the self is just as exclusive and complex as the realm of the universe, and just as seemingly insignificant as the existence of one dying star millions of light years away among millions of others. When one tells me we need a system to keep us in check because we are a hazard to our peers, I walk outside and start a conversation with a random stranger.

Humans have this amazing quality about them: they want to believe they are unruly, strange and dangerous when in reality, as one, they are what’s more beautiful, more virtuous about living, they are abundant when it comes to possibilities. When not under pressure to participate in conflict, man excels; as one, in order to serve others and be one, not a group.

Threats don’t provide fertile soil for full ecosystems to evolve: peaceful existence of individual components does. ~