We must be our own before we can be another's

every being on earth looks for the good for itself whatever is the best thing for itself that's where the instinct to live the will to live to survive comes from and of course with most animals they're born to know what the good thing is for them what their purpose is and for most animals it's this comes from Instinct their instinct tells them to eat to prepare for when to procreate to pass on their genes and that's how they fulfill it without even thinking about it without even really maybe knowing humans of course are a little

bit special in that way and depending on how you look at it we're blessed and cursed in the way that we don't have very much Instinct we certainly don't have Instinct that tells us what the purpose of life is what what our purpose is and um What happiness is how we can Find meaning yet we all have the drive to find meaning we're in search of meaning and purpose and certainly happiness so the people who do find this happiness this meaning are the Blessed ones and the ones that can't are cursed in a way and

of course what we humans do starting at a young age is we see this lack in ourselves we we we have this drive for meaning but of course we don't we haven't found it yet and we look for meaning and purpose and happiness in other people we see people around us who who seem to be happy who seem to be complete who seem to be self-sufficient and we want that and we certainly want to be popular with people who seem to have that so we look for friendships and and relationships that we can fill with

people like that who in turn then we hope can fill that void that hole within us and um so we attach ourselves to other people we attach our search for purpose our search for meaning our happiness and even our identity consequently to other people to our relationships to our standing with other people and you'll you'll see this in especially romantic relationships all the time people will literally tell each other that they complete each other that they're their better half Etc you hear this all the time now of course the question is if you attach your

happiness your identity your purpose to someone else and something happens to that person they become sick they they die they pass away or for whatever reason they decide that they don't want you anymore that they don't want this friendship this relationship anymore what happens then to your happiness to your identity to your meaning in life it's greatly affected you see people whose you know spouse dies and because they've exactly done this they've attached their identity and happiness to them when this person when the spouse dies they start drifting they they first of all they become

extremely depressed they have no sense no idea what to do with themselves anymore and often times even they become very bitter people and they start resenting the world and the title of this video is a sentence out of Ralph Waldo Emerson's uh lecture called friendship and he says we must be our own before we can be in others so what does he mean by that he's saying that we need to be complete we need to be self-sufficient we need need to be happy we need to have meaning that we don't derive from someone or something

else because anything that we tie our happiness to that's external is can be affected also by other external circumstances which we have no control over in other words he's advising us to find meaning and happiness in things that cannot be affected by Fortune but still fulfills our destiny and Destiny in the sense that you know our species as a us as a species our destiny is to find meaning that's what we're searching for so and Fortune of course being all those external events that we have that we're in no control of so if we lose

our identity when we attach it to others and and generally to things that we're not in control of we lose ourselves we're we we remain in complete so how can we be complete how can we find meaning and happiness without attaching ourselves to people and things that we're not in control of well he and Emerson and and the ancient stoics for example or ancient Greek philosophers tell us that that's exactly what virtues are for virtues are things that are within ourselves and that we are in complete control of so if you attach yourself to wealth

to money to a certain position a certain job or again a relationship to be with certain people if you look to complete yourself through other people natural disasters or just the desires and whims and and ideas and opinions of other people can greatly affect you they can be taken away from you and consequently your happiness your identity your purpose your meaning can be taken away from you but what if we attached ourselves to our own morality if we attached ourselves to again what the ancient philosophers would call virtues if we attach ourselves to honesty to

Justice to courage these are things that we're really trying to get to anyway aren't the most courageous people the most honest people the kindest people the most just people the ones that are most attractive to us anyway aren't those the ones that have a certain magnetism that that draws us to them in the first place isn't that why we want to have these people in our in our lives and isn't that why we attach ourselves to them so that they can fill this hole within us this lack these things that we don't have so instead

of getting them from other people instead of being needy instead of relying on others to fill this hole we could go within ourselves inside of ourselves and completely independently acquire these things without getting them from other people and this is exactly what Emerson me means that we must be our own before we can be another's meaning we must be complete we must have found our meaning ourselves independently of other people before we can be with other people because otherwise this just becomes this relationship of using one another of hoping that some someone else can acquire

meaning and purpose and happiness for us or through them and now I know many people that have listened so far are going to think that I'm advocating for just not caring for anyone or anything and that we should just shut ourselves into our rooms and and forget the world so that the world can't hurt us if we don't live in the world the world can't hurt us that's not what I'm advocating in fact it's the exact opposite imagine yourself a complete person a self-sufficient self-reliant happy fulfilled person without getting that from anyone else and now

you go out into the world and you see people that maybe have these similar values they're courageous they're strong they're self-reliant they're honest they're decent people now you're you're going to be with them because you want to not because you have to not because you need to not because you're needy but simply because you see the same things in them you see self- fulfillment you see happiness you see completeness you see wholeness in them and you just want to be with that there's nothing wrong with that we're we're social creatures and we perpetuate these values

and these strengths by coming together but not as lacking half individuals coming together trying to become one whole person but individually whole and complete people coming together for a greater purpose that's the strength of humanity that's where we get our accumulated Knowledge from every single person learns something through experience in their lives and if that was all they wanted if they were selfish and they didn't need anyone else didn't want anyone else as long as they're good it's fine then we wouldn't have accumulated knowledge no one would pass this knowledge on from generation to generation

and improve it each time these people who have done that had a greater goal than themselves in mind they weren't just trying to fill a whole they weren't just trying to complete themselves Find meaning for themselves and and move on they did this through the only possible way and that's another Point by the way it's not that I'm advocating for you to find it in yourself when you could also find it from someone else these things that are truly meaningful fulfilling giving you purpose giving you true happiness are things that you can only find in

yourself and not in other others because there's no such thing as happiness that can be taken away from you because it wouldn't be happiness you cannot be happy about anything if you're in constant fear of it being taken away from you true happiness is only that what comes from possessing those things that are fully in our control and that give us happiness unconditionally so now you can you can be an example to others too stepping into society having relationships having people in your lives and showing everyone around you by example how they can stop being

needy how they can stop being fulfilled and whole by themselves and to stop being vulnerable in the way that they attach everything that's important to them their identity their purpose their meaning their happiness to others so essentially when we say we must be our own before we can be others we're saying that we need to stop using people to get what we want and also on the flip side to stop being able to be used by other people who can dangle any sort of job promotion uh money whatever popularity in front of us to get

what they want from us a whole self-content and happy and purposeful human being finds that self-contentment purpose meaning happiness identity within themselves