Get over yourself

It seems to me that we are born alone and die alone. We are trapped by our own bodies and can only escape briefly through sleep or mind altering routes through numbing the mind/body connection by turning the brain off (with the likes of TV or other similar passive activies) or alcohol/drugs but at the end of the day we are still embodied and it is all about us baby.

Seemingly, part of the irony of this life is the realisation that although it is all about us on the one hand (rarely will anyone pay your rent, feed you by hand, or help you cultivate your love for punk rock music, etc.), it is all about everyone else, in a very real sense. After starting the conflict resolution courses, it appears that the greatest conflicts arise because we're not actually listening to the other person and are simply stuck in our own positions, unwilling to budge ("I want a raise of 15% and if you're not going to give it to me, I'm walking"), whereas if we could just get over ourselves and out of our positional trench, ask the other person questions to find out where they're coming from, their interests and issues, we might be able to come to some understanding and resolution at the end of it all. In order to come to a resolution, it has to become less about you and more about them in order to bring all the threads together, as it were.

If life isn't all about us, in the end, it makes day to day interaction easier on the one hand. Being open to others isn't the norm and I suspect if we were even remotely respectful and civil to one another, many of the problems that plague us would disappear overnight. Litter? Well, if you're being respectful of others, you will be well aware that that piece of plastic wrap will go where the wind takes it, making the city ugly, dirty and potentially dangerous for wildlife. If we actually cared about others (and ourselves arguably) it simply wouldn't be an option to drop that plastic wrapping. Although, taking that argument further, the plastic wrapping wouldn't have been necessary in the first place because it arose out of sheer nastiness in the 80s with dolts tampering with products which lead to illness and even death.

At any rate, it seems the challenge is to get over ourselves.