Contents
Step 55: «Self-sufficiency isolates. The need unites »
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter I will tell you how the help of others is essential for our happiness and development
What would you prefer? To be a perfectly self-sufficient person who does not need to rely on anyone or to be a person who has to rely on others to meet some (external) needs? Most of us would choose the first, and yet there is much more happiness in the second. We are facing another of the great paradoxes of the human being. We want an increase in happiness, but we choose the paths that, instead of increasing it, reduce it. On what do I base myself to affirm the previous principle? In this maxim:
«Self-sufficiency isolates. Necessity unites. “
When you are self-reliant and have no need to lean on others, this leads to isolation, while when you need their help, even with minor matters, this connects you with people. This is what I call the “salt theory.”
MeValgoSolo is a man with a serious expression, unfriendly, surly and hermit. He lives on the fourth floor of the building. PidoHelp is a widowed man, father of a teenage daughter, very sociable and tremendously clueless. He lives on the fifth floor. Every time he needs salt, without thinking twice, he knocks on the door of the first neighbor who blocks him, lets out a genuine laugh and says hello with: “I’m the clueless guy from the fifth.” They both laugh; his neighbors like the surprise and they all end up giving him more salt than he needs. MeValgoJust try to never lack for anything so as not to have to ask anyone for anything. Not out of deference to your neighbors, but to avoid having to be sociable. The day he sees that he is lacking salt, he gets very angry with himself, but of course, he never allows himself to have to swallow his pride and go to a neighbor to ask for it.
Now comes the interesting thing. Do you know who PidoAyuda and her teenage daughter went on vacation with? With a hilarious and adventurous group introduced by the family on the third floor. Do you know who helped her daughter get over her mother’s death? The second’s neighbor’s son who is exactly the same age. Do you know who he just started a business with that is going great for him? With another father of the first who is also a computer scientist like him. And the most important question. Do you know how he met them? Thanks to the fact that something as insignificant as salt was missing.
I don’t know if you’ve stopped to think about the interesting hieroglyph behind this story. When PidoHelp knocks on a neighbor’s door, the goal is neither to go on vacation with him, nor to meet the boy who may end up saving his daughter’s life. The goal is just a handful of salt. In other words, what the objective is is something completely inconsequential; and yet what is not the goal is of colossal importance. The paradox is that you would not get the greatest benefit, if you did not have the least need.
This theory turns our entire concept of needs upside down. We work daily to eliminate them, and yet we should see them completely the opposite. We should not take them as a source of concern, but of realization. Sometimes the least of the needs can be the best of the excuses to reconnect with someone with whom to later build the greatest of the projects.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
@Angel