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May 28 - June 9, 2025
In a sense, that is a way of living of refusing to acknowledge one’s life tasks. ‘Work’ does not mean having a job at a company. Work in the home, childrearing, contributing to the local society, hobbies and all manner of other things are work. Companies and such are just one small part of that. A way of living that acknowledges only company work is one that is lacking in harmony of life.
For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself. Adler came up with an extremely simple answer to address this reality. Namely, that the feeling of ‘I am beneficial to the community’ or ‘I am of use to someone’ is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.
You are not the one who decides if your contributions are of use. That is the task of other people, and is not an issue in which you can intervene.
In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution.
People want to like themselves. They want to feel that they have worth. In order to feel that, they want a feeling of contribution that tells them ‘I am of use to someone’. And they seek recognition from others as an easy means for gaining that feeling of contribution.
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.
people can only be truly aware of their worth when they are able to feel ‘I am of use to someone’.
it doesn’t matter if the contribution one makes at such a time is without any visible form.
First of all, we human beings have a universal desire that is referred to as ‘pursuit of superiority’.
‘Revenge’ and ‘pursuit of easy superiority’ are easily linked. One makes trouble for another person, while trying at the same time to be ‘special’.
Why is it necessary to be special?
But is being normal, being ordinary, really such a bad thing? Is it something inferior? Or, in truth, isn’t everybody normal? It is necessary to think this through to its logical conclusion.
You are probably rejecting normality because you equate being normal with being incapable. Being normal is not being incapable. One does not need to flaunt one’s superiority.
if life were climbing a mountain in order to reach the top, then the greater part of life would end up being ‘en route’.
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.
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.
If life were a line, then life planning would be possible. But our lives are only a series of dots. A well-planned life is not something to be treated as necessary or unnecessary, as it is impossible.
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.
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.
Imagine that you are standing on a theatre stage. If the house lights are on, you’ll probably be able to see all the way to the back of the hall. But if you’re under a bright spotlight, you won’t be able to make out even the front row. That’s exactly how it is with our lives. It’s because we cast a dim light on our entire lives that we are able to see the past and the future. Or, at least we imagine we can. But if one is shining a bright spotlight on here and now, one cannot see the past or the future anymore.
Yes. We should live more earnestly only here and now. The fact that you think you can see the past, or predict the future, is proof that rather than living earnestly here and now, you are living in a dim twilight. Life is a series of moments, and neither the past nor the future exist. You are trying to give yourself a way out by focusing on the past and the future. What happened in the past has nothing whatsoever to do with your here and now, and what the future may hold is not a matter to think about here and now. If you are living earnestly here and now, you will not be concerned with such
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Lifestyle is about here and now, and is something that one can change of one’s own volition.
The life that lies ahead of you is a completely blank page, and there are no tracks that have been laid for you to follow. There is no story there.
As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere, and will only pass our days one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience.
What is the meaning of life? What are people living for? When someone posed these questions to Adler, this was his answer: ‘Life in general has no meaning.’
‘Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.’
When one attempts to choose freedom, it is only natural that one may lose one’s way. At this juncture, Adlerian psychology holds up a ‘guiding star’ as a grand compass pointing to a life of freedom.
No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of ‘I contribute to others’, you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Whether you’re disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free.
if ‘I’ change, the world will change. This means that the world can be changed only by me and no one else will change it for me.
‘The world is simple, and life is too.’
