The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

by Ichiro Kishimi

Suppose your shut-in child helped you wash the dishes after a meal. If you were to say then, ‘Enough of that already—just go to school,’ you would be using the words of such parents who detract from an image of an ideal child. If you were to take such an approach, the child would probably end up even more discouraged. However, if you can say a straightforward ‘thank you’, the child just might feel his own worth, and take a new step forward. YOUTH: That’s just utterly hypocritical! It’s nothing more than the nonsensical talk of a hypocrite. It sounds like the ‘neighbourly love’ that Christians talk about. The community feeling, the horizontal relationships, the gratitude for existence and so on. Who on earth could actually do such things? PHILOSOPHER: With regard to this issue of community feeling, there was a person who asked Adler a similar question. Adler’s reply was the following: ‘Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.’ My advice is exactly the same.