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May 3 - June 30, 2025
No matter what sort of appeal the other person might make, you are the only one who decides what you should do.
that is an intervention, and it is taking the child’s task away from him. And as a result of repeating that intervention, the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face his life tasks. As Adler says, “Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”
Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below.
A stone is powerless. Once it has begun to roll downhill, it will continue to roll until released from the natural laws of gravity and inertia. But we are not stones. We are beings who are capable of resisting inclination. We can stop our tumbling selves and climb uphill.
In short, that “freedom is being disliked by other people.” YOUTH: Huh? What was that? PHILOSOPHER: It’s that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.
One wants to satisfy one’s desire for recognition. But conducting oneself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and is also impossible.
There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.
One neither prepares to be self-righteous nor becomes defiant. One just separates tasks. There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task.
One moves forward without fearing the possibility of being disliked. One does not live as if one were rolling downhill, but instead climbs the slope that lies ahead. That is freedom for a human being.
As long as I use etiology to think, It is because he hit me that I have a bad relationship with my father, it would be a matter that was impossible for me to do anything about. But if I can think, I brought out the memory of being hit because I don’t want my relationship with my father to get better, then I will be holding the card to repair relations. Because if I can just change the goal, that fixes everything.
Many people think that the interpersonal relationship cards are held by the other person. That is why they wonder, How does that person feel about me? and end up living in such a way as to satisfy the wishes of other people. But if they can grasp the separation of tasks, they will notice that they are holding all the cards. This is a new way of thinking.
The fact that there are people who do not think well of you is proof that you are living in freedom.
You are a part of a community, not its center.
In Adlerian psychology, however, a sense of belonging is something that one can attain only by making an active commitment to the community of one’s own accord, and not simply by being here.
One has to stand on one’s own two feet, and take one’s own steps forward with the tasks of interpersonal relations. One needs to think not, What will this person give me? but rather, What can I give to this person? That is commitment to the community.
A sense of belonging is something that one acquires through one’s own efforts—it is not something one is endowed with at birth.
Though this might be termed a “you and I” relationship, if it is one that can break down just because you raise an objection, then it is not the sort of relationship you need to get into in the first place. It is fine to just let go of it. Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.
In the first place, the feeling of inferiority is an awareness that arises within vertical relationships. If one can build horizontal relationships that are “equal but not the same” for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge.
The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability.
When receiving praise becomes one’s goal, one is choosing a way of living that is in line with another person’s system of values.
If one’s means for gaining a feeling of contribution turns out to be “being recognized by others,” in the long run, one will have no choice but to walk through life in accordance with other people’s wishes. There is no freedom in a feeling of contribution that is gained through the desire for recognition. We are beings who choose freedom while aspiring to happiness.
If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that “I am of use to someone,” without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others. In other words, a person who is obsessed with the desire for recognition does not have any community feeling yet, and has not managed to engage in self-acceptance, confidence in others, or contribution to others.
The philosopher’s points could be summed up as follows: People can be truly aware of their worth only when they are able to feel “I am of use to someone.” However, it doesn’t matter if the contribution one makes at such a time is without any visible form. It is enough to have the subjective sense of being of use to someone, that is to say, a feeling of contribution. And then the philosopher arrives at the following conclusion: Happiness is the feeling of contribution. There certainly seemed to be aspects of the truth there. But is that really all that happiness is? Not if it’s the happiness
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All types of problem behavior, from refusing to attend school, to wrist cutting, to underage drinking and smoking, and so on, are forms of the pursuit of easy superiority.
Do not treat it as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. If you look through a magnifying glass at a solid line drawn with chalk, you will discover that what you thought was a line is actually a series of small dots. Seemingly linear existence is actually a series of dots; in other words, life is a series of moments.
Yes. It is a series of moments called “now.” We can live only in the here and now. Our lives exist only in moments. Adults who do not know this attempt to impose “linear” lives onto young people. Their thinking is that staying on the conventional tracks—good university, big company, stable household—is a happy life. But life is not made up of lines or anything like that.
Yes. With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.
What kind of goal is the act of going on a journey? Suppose you are going on a journey to Egypt. Would you try to arrive at the Great Pyramid of Giza as efficiently and quickly as possible, and then head straight back home by the shortest route? One would not call that a “journey.” You should be on a journey the moment you step outside your home, and all the moments on the way to your destination should be a journey. Of course, there might be circumstances that prevent you from making it to the pyramid, but that does not mean you didn’t go on a journey. This is “energeial life.”
The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something.
Since neither the past nor the future exists, let’s talk about now. It’s not yesterday or tomorrow that decides it. It’s here and now.
In other words, there is no meaning in using generalizations to talk about life. But being confronted by such incomprehensible tragedies without taking any action is tantamount to affirming them. Regardless of the circumstances, we must take some form of action. We must stand up to Kant’s “inclination.”
And Adler, having stated that “life in general has no meaning,” then continues, “Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.”
So life in general has no meaning whatsoever. But you can assign meaning to that life. And you are the only one who can assign meaning to your life.
