17 Nov The hardest person to get along with in the whole world is, in fact, yourself. (LOU MARINOFF)
Before we speak of getting along with others, first we must get along with ourselves. It seems to me that all outer conflicts between people are manifestations of inner ones within people. If you suffer from an unresolved inner conflict, then you aren’t getting along with yourself as well as you can. And if you aren’t getting along with yourself as well as you can, you will not get along with others as well as you can either.
Whenever I witness human beings mistreat, abuse, or injure one another, whether in direct confrontation or in underhanded or backhanded ways, I always notice that the perpetrators do not appear very contented with themselves. People who make war on others have failed to conquer themselves. Walt Kelly’s famous comic strip character Pogo summed it up this way: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” The hardest person to get along with in the whole world is, in fact, yourself.
On the other hand, people who treat others with genuine kindness, consideration, and respect — if not love and compassion — almost certainly get along with themselves to begin with. Resolving your own inner conflicts, so that you have fewer storms brewing within yourself, will calm your interactions with others as well.
Even those who try to provoke you with their own tempests will be unable to do so. Once you conquer the enemy within, you will have no more enemies without. This is why Gandhi said that in his “dictionary” of nonviolent resistance to oppression, “there is no word for enemy.”
Of course, all of us experience some temporary internal upsets —whether due to bad hair days, PMS, lack of sleep, a low threshold of frustration, or simply “getting up on the wrong side of the bed” — and may occasionally lash out.
But we should be able to get over these foul moods quickly. They are the exception, not the rule, of our habitual conduct.
When you are in a bad mood, even for a few minutes or hours, you are not getting along very well with yourself, and you experience disease. If you can forget your disease for even one minute — relying on someone else to cheer you up or take you away from yourself or distract you or make you laugh — then you allow every possible kind of ease to enter into that minute.
But if you cling stubbornly to your unhappiness, you prevent every kind of happiness from entering.
Even Nietzsche, who was not exactly brimming with the milk of human kindness, realized the importance of forgetting the causes of one’s disease.
He who forgets is cured.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
As Nietzsche knew, this applies to groups as well as individuals: “A happy people have no history.”
By contrast, individuals or groups carrying around too much history are likely to be upset much of the time.
Allowing the past to occupy your present and obstruct your future is a sure way not to get along with yourself.
If you are in a bad mood, it will definitely go away if you are willing to forget what brought it on.
We all have the power to do this, although many need to learn to exercise that power and practice exercising it more fully.
The Big Questions: How Philosophy Can Change Your Life
Lou Marinoff
