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February 29 - May 23, 2024
Before arguing over the state of the world, have some thought for your neighbor. Have some thought for your interpersonal relationships on “nothing days.” That is all we can do.
We have to keep our hearts abundant and give what we have saved up to others. We must not wait for respect from other people, but must ourselves have respect and confidence in them. … We must not become poor-spirited.
It is something we build. Love that is just “falling,” anyone can do. Such a thing is not worthy of being called a life task. It is because we build it up from nothing by our strength of will that the task of love is difficult.
At this time, your obsession with that camera will be just like your falling for someone, and you will be beset by a “tempest” of endless desire.
You just wanted to acquire, to possess, and to triumph. … The “falling in love” you speak of is no different from this desire to possess, or this desire for triumph.
Yes. For example, even if their passionate love leads to marriage, that is not the goal of love. Marriage is really the starting point of their love. Because real life will continue, day after day, from that point.
Yes. To understand this way of thinking, one may turn not only to Adler, but to the words of Erich Fromm as well. He even published a book by the same name, The Art of Loving, which was a worldwide bestseller. To be sure, it is difficult to be loved by another person. But loving another person is a task of far greater difficulty.
“We receive education on the task that is accomplished on one’s own, and on the work that is accomplished by twenty people. But we do not receive education on the task that is accomplished by two people.”
There is no such thing as work that can come into being without connections with other people, and without cooperation.
That’s right. One upholds “us” as being higher than “me” or “you.” One maintains that order in all of one’s choices in life.
One has to make peace with the world, and come to the understanding that one is a part of the world.
Why the objective of education is self-reliance. Why Adlerian psychology treats education as one of the most important issues. What meaning is contained in the term “self-reliance”?
So, when we can break away from self-centeredness, we can achieve self-reliance at last … ?
Yes. To know love, and to change the subject of life to “us”—this is a new start to life. The “us” that began as just two people will eventually broaden in scope to the entire community, and the entire human race.
To be self-reliant is to break away from one’s childhood lifestyle, and to get past one’s self-centeredness.
And it is exactly at that point in time that children choose their own lifestyles. What kind of place is this world in which they live, what kind of people inhabit it, and what about the children themselves—what kind of people are they? They choose their “attitudes toward life” of their own accord. … Do you understand what this fact means?
what you are saying is that their problem behavior comes out of their chosen lifestyle for being loved?
All parents must uphold the clear objective of self-reliance and go about building equal relationships with their children.
And perhaps, by attaining something on that different path, you are hoping to be recognized for your worth as a human being.
You are all caught up in the need for approval.
As long as you hold on to a childhood lifestyle, you will not be able to wipe away that possibility.
To get out from under the control of the love one is given, the only thing one can do is love oneself. By loving. Not waiting to be loved or waiting for destiny, but loving someone of one’s own accord. That is the only way.
You do not love yourself yet. You are not able to respect yourself or have confidence in yourself. That is why you end up assuming that in a love relationship you will “definitely get hurt” or “definitely feel miserable.” Because you think that there couldn’t be anyone who could love someone like you.
Listen, that “golden age” is over. And the world is not your mother. You must take a straight look at the childhood lifestyle you have been carrying with you in secret and make it new. Don’t wait for someone who will love you to appear.
Right. No matter what sort of dictator I might be, I cannot force people to respect me. In a relationship of respect, the only way is for the respect to come from me first. That is the only thing I can do, regardless of what sort of attitude the other person might take in response. This is what I was talking about earlier.
If I loved this person, I could be happier. That’s what I thought. Looking back on it now, I realize that it was a mentality of seeking an “our happiness” that went beyond “my happiness.” I did not know about Adler at the time, however, and I had never given any reasoned thought to love and marriage. I only wanted to be happy. That is all.
Love is all. The person who lives wanting an easy life or looking for the easy way may find fleeting pleasures, but they will not be able to grasp real happiness. It is only by loving another person that we are liberated from self-centeredness. It is only by loving another person that we can achieve self-reliance. And it is only by loving another person that we arrive at community feeling.
The common sense of the people undergoes a slow transformation in tandem with the changing times.
One devotes one’s ceaseless efforts so that when the day of parting comes, one will be able to be satisfied that “meeting this person, and passing the time together with this person, was not a mistake.” Whether it is in one’s relationship with one’s students, in one’s relationship with one’s parents, or in one’s relationship with the person one loves.
“The world is simple, and life is too. But keeping it simple is difficult, and it is there that the passage of ‘nothing days’ becomes one’s trial.”
Because my comrades, my students, are living in the midst of great chaos. Because that is the place where I live.
Our dialogue, which became even more impassioned than the previous time, explored education theory, organizational theory, work theory, social theory, and even extended to life theory before reaching its conclusion with the grand themes of “love” and “self-reliance.”
As is evident from his characterization of counseling as “reeducation,” for Adler, all people living in a community were engaged with education, and all people were in the position of receiving education.
