Social beings

SOCIAL BEINGS

Mario D’Couto

            Confucius once said, “Under the heavens, under the sky, there is but one family.” This pandemic may have brought some of us to the realization that the common denominator of human reality is life itself. If there is no life, all else is of no use,. This pandemic may have also brought some of us to the realization that money is not everything although most of us spend countless hours trying to earn more and for some reason, this may seem to be like an illusive goal, in the hope that the more we have of it, the more happier we would be, like  the donkey chasing the carrot. I will come to that later in this blogpost/article but the main thing that I would like to highlight is about what it means to be human and why relating and socializing with others matters more than we could imagine.

            Aristotle once said that the human person is a social animal. For a long time, pain and pleasure were thought to be the governing factors of human life but there is a third element that perhaps may have been overlooked and that’s the social dimension. As surprising as it may seem, research shows that the regions of our brains that are affected when we are physically hurt is the same region which gets affected when we are socially hurt or isolated. Imagine a person telling someone else who has a broken leg, “Oh, come on, get on with it, it will be okay”, that would be downright rude, besides depending on the intensity of the injury and a person’s body, it would take time to heal. Yet, when someone goes through a break – up or when a loved one dies, we tend to do the same.

            In 1943, Abraham Maslow, published a paper about the hierarchy of human needs. This is what it looked like,

            From the above diagram, it would seem that our primary need is food, clothing and shelter, yet, if for a moment we think that an infant’s need is food, water and shelter, isn’t this the same for adults? And yet while it is the same for adults, infants are in no position of getting it or fending it for themselves.

            It has been observed that all mammalian forms, from tree shrubs to human babies, need a caregiver who is committed to make sure that the infant’s biological needs are met. Now some may want to counter – ague saying that as adults, it’s possible if one chooses to stay alone as long as the need for food, shelter and clothing are met. True! But, even to get those things, we are in some way dependent on others. I am dependent on the guy who sells vegetables at my grocery store, or the butcher at the meat shop (no meat + no vegetables = no food). You see the connection? Yet our need to socialize and interact is not confined to just the physical aspect of life. We can truly say that it is our ability to connect, socialize and work together that has taken us forward. I will come to that shortly but this only causes me to think that perhaps we may need to rethink Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Without social support, we cannot survive to actualize our full potential. Being socially connected is a need with a capital ‘N’. Love and belonging might seem life a convenience we can live without, but our biology is built to thirst for connections because it is linked to our most basic survival needs. Being socially connected is therefore crucial.

            In this regard, it would be worth mentioning something about social media. While there is no doubt that social media seems to have made our world a global village, rarely does it seem to bring the same level of bonding as compared to a face – to – face interaction. In fact, a lot of young people who seemed to have been hooked on to social media are said to have suffered from depression and anxiety. I am not saying social media is bad but perhaps it may not be as effective as interacting with the person physically in real life.

            Dr. Paul Brand who co – authored the book “Fearfully and wonderfully made” along with Philip Yancey writes about how the sense of touch makes a big difference not for just humans but even animals as well. In an experiment that was conducted by the American psychologist, Dr. Harry F. Harlow, he found that monkeys raised in cages with cloth on the floor grew huskier and healthier than monkeys in cages with wire mesh floors. He constructed an ingenious surrogate mother out of terry cloth, with a light bulb behind her to radiate heat. The cloth mother featured a rubber nipple attached to a milk supply from which the babies could feed. They adopted her with great enthusiasm. Why not? After all she, was comfortingly available unlike the real mother who would probably rough it up, bite them or push them aside.

            After proving that babies could be ‘raised’ by inanimate, surrogate mothers, Harlow next sought to measure the mother’s touchable, tactile characteristics. He put 8 baby monkeys in a large cage that contained the terry cloth mother plus a new mother, this one made entirely out of wire mesh. Dr. Harlow’s assistants, controlling the milk flow to each mother, taught 4 of the baby monkeys to nurse from the terry cloth mother and 4 from the wire mesh mother. Each baby monkey could get milk only from the mother assigned to it.

            Through this experiment, it was found that all the 8 baby monkeys spent all their waking time (16 – 18 hours per day roughly) huddled next to the terry cloth mother. They hugged her, patted her and perched on her. The 4 baby monkeys that were assigned to the wire mesh mother went to her only for feeding, then scooted back to the comfort and protection of the terry cloth mother. When frightened, all 8 of them would seek solace by climbing onto the terry cloth mother. From this, Dr. Harlow concluded, “We were not surprised to discover that contact comfort was an important basic affectional or love variable but we did not expect it to overshadow so completely the variable of nursing; indeed the disparity is so great as to suggest that the primary function of nursing is that of insuring frequent and intimate body contact of the infant with the mother. Certainly, man cannot live by milk alone.”

            In some other experiments, some baby monkeys were raised in cages with only a wire mesh mother. They too approached her only for feeding. However, many of those baby monkeys did not survive.

With that being said, although the role of tactile stimulation during birth remains speculative, the need for touching after birth has been dramatically and tragically demonstrated. As late as 1920, the death rate among infants in some hospitals in America approached 100%. Then Dr. Fritz Talbot of Boston brought from Germany an unscientific concept of ‘tender loving care.’ While visiting the Children’s Clinic in Dusseldorf, he had noticed an old woman wandering through the hospital always balancing a sickly baby on her hip. Here’s what the guide said, “That is Old Anna. When we have done everything we can medically for a baby and it is still not doing well, we turn it over to Old Anna and she cures it.”

When Dr. Talbot proposed this idea to the American institution, they thought it was a joke but the statistics were too hard to ignore. For example, in Bellevue Hospital in New York, after a rule was established that all babies must be picked up, carried around and ‘mothered’ several times a day, the infant mortality rate dropped from 35% to less than 10%.

Despite these findings, even today touching is often viewed as an unavoidable part of the more important tasks of feeding and cleaning the baby. Seldom is it considered an essential need in itself without which a baby may never mature. Among some severely disturbed children, forceful and persistent touching may represent the only hope for a cure. That’s how important the need to socialize and relate is right from infancy.

Today, there seems to be a lot of focus in developing one’s uniqueness and while there is no doubt that none of us is a carbon copy of the other, most of the formation of our thought process happens externally. This is to say that who we are or what we do or think are in some ways shaped by the things around us. Matthew Lieberman in his book, “Social”, explains it in the following words, “The modern world has created an extended period of adolescence and self – discovery and thus we think of this search or our unique identity as the most natural thing in the world. But I’m not sure the self – evolved primarily so that the Marilyn Mansons and Lady Gagas of the world could make a living out of being as different as possible from everyone else. Prior to the modern era, humans spent a few years being cared for as children and then moved into the workforce, often with responsibility for others, by the teenage years. Most had no time for soul – searching; life was about being cared for or taking care of others from beginning to end.”

Perhaps, a good question to ask is, ‘What is freedom?’ or ‘How do we define freedom in the context of relating with others or living in a community or society?’ ‘Is it about doing whatever we want?’ Our lives are shaped by the choices we make and in these choices, it sometimes not only affects us but it could also affect those around us. To shed some light, consider the following example illustrated by Matthew Lieberman in his book, “Social”, which goes as follows,

“Imagine that while you are sleeping soundly, little green men (aliens) snatch you from your warm bed and take you to their advanced neurosurgery facility in the sky. They are deciding whether to alter your brain such that you permanently lose all your impulses, urges, desires and emotional reactions or to leave those intact and instead perform a surgery that will leave you permanently unable to control your impulses, urges, desires and emotional reaction. The aliens cannot decide among themselves, so they let you cast the tiebreaking vote. Which would you prefer to lose if you had to loose either emotion or self – control forever? It’s the classic battle between self – control and emotion, between Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk.

After multiple failed escape attempts, I suspect that I would ultimately choose to keep my impulses, urges, desires and emotions and give up my ability to control any of them. It would be embarrassing to lack self – control but it would devastating to lose the rest. Who am I without all of these? How would I know what is worth doing? Without impulses and emotions, I would have no motivation to do anything. Remember that not all impulses and urges are bad. I have the urge to kiss my wife and son every day. I have impulses to help those in need. I have the desire to hike up mountains and watch the sunset. These are all wonderful things without which I am not sure life would be worth living.

Unfortunately even though you have made your choice, things get more complicated. Before performing their operation on you, the aliens suddenly perfect a new technology that allows them to perform neurosurgery on all the inhabitants of a city at once, while they sleep in their beds. They are going to start with your city but because you are onboard their spaceship, you are now exempt from the surgery. You personally get a reprieve: you will keep both your emotions and ability, to control them. However, you now have to choose whether all the people in your city will lose their ability to feel their impulses and emotions or will lose their capacity for self – control. Whatever you decide will be applied to everyone, so you will be returning to either a city of full of highly impulsive, emotional people or a city full of non – impulsive, highly controlled people. An added note: your decision will not affect your family or close friends because luckily for them, they are all away on vacation.

What do you choose for all the people who make up your city (but are not part of your immediate social networks)? For me and I suspect for many of you, this decision yields a different result from what I wanted for myself. I don’t want to live in a city full of people who are impulsive non – stop without the ability to control themselves. These people will be reckless and a constant threat to my safety. It would be like living next door to a fraternity house where it’s always 1 a.m. on Saturday morning.

These two hypothetical decision suggest that I value other people’s having self – control more than I value having it myself. Assuming this preference is generally true, we can turn it around. If I value other people having self – control more than I value having it myself, it follows that the people around me care more about me having and exercising self – control than I do. My self – control is more of a benefit to them than to me.”

To understand this a little more, deciphering people’s actions and motion may not have life and death consequences but over the course of a lifetime, making sense of the thoughts and intentions of others can be the difference between increased happiness and social connection or escalating loneliness and frustration.

Although physical movements in and of themselves do not provide high – level meanings (for example, moving one’s fingers up and down), they suggest there are meanings and motives hiding behind them, waiting to be discovered. The ability to identify what someone is doing is the first steps towards being able to understand why. Consider the following example. Let’s say you see a friend drinking a glass of single malt at 8 a.m.. You ask him why. If he answers, ‘In order to have a drink’. Strictly speaking, he is answering your question, providing you with a goal (to have a drink). But his answer is entirely unsatisfying. It is obvious that he is taking a drink because he wants to take a drink. What you really want to know is what special motivation led him to the unusual goal of wanting to have an alcoholic drink at this hour of the morning. The responses ‘to have a drink’ and ‘to drown my sorrow because I lost my job’ are technically both answers to the question but they highlight how the word goal can have different meanings.  

We are all mind readers! For instance, when you read you’re not just comprehending the marks on a page when you read but you may probably be trying to understand the thoughts behind the writing. Vice versa, in me writing this blogpost/article, I am keeping in mind the people to whom I am writing to. As impossible as this might sound, we do this all the time without realizing it. Like fish who have no idea that they are in water because they are surrounded by it, mindreading is so basic to who we are that we rarely notice it.

Just imagine how you would get through your day if you couldn’t make sense of the minds of others or count on others to make sense of your mind. Consider, for example, when a person taking a flight to a particular place or country, a shuttle picks him up to bring him to where his car is parked. As the shuttle approaches the terminal, he waves his hand and the driver knows that he would like him to stop so he can get on. When the shuttle stops and the door opens, he knows the driver’s intention as well, that is to say, he is being invited to climb aboard. This may apparently seem like a simple transaction between two complete strangers. Yet without each of them having an accurate understanding of the psychological meaning of the other’s behaviour, they would not be able to pull off the innocuous interaction.

As subtle as it seems, the modern world would stop in its tracks if we no longer had the ability to understand or predict the minds of others. Our ability to think allows us to imagine great achievements but without the ability to think socially and share our vision with others in a way that engages them, we would be left to our devices to connect our vision to reality. Consider the ancient Greek civilization as an example. Greek philosophy came about as a result of the exchange of ideas. The same holds true for the growth and development of other civilizations and humanity as a whole.

The formation and growth of the human brain which is believed to have been responsible for abstract meaning was due to the interaction and socialization that happened thousands of years ago. Imagine for a person to go hunting for food with the fear at the back of his head thinking whether he would get food or become food. Transpose that into a situation where that person is in a group. Over here he has the back up of all the other members and more can be done. However, while this may sound advantageous, the flipside to it is competing for the same food and finding partners to mate with. This is where the forging of friendship and alliances led to cooperation which in turn helped in socializing and the exchange of ideas.

Even in the business world, we see something similar. Economists have long studied human capital as a driver of productivity in organization. Human capital is the amount of intelligence, experience and education a person has. Not surprisingly, companies with more human capital tend to do better. However, most studies of human capital ignore the concept of social capital, the social connections and social networks within an organization. Does human capital lead to productivity all on its own merit or does social capital pay a role in catalyzing human output into optimal performance?

In a research that was done on three Italian consulting companies to find out about the impact of human and social capital of the employees in these companies, it was found that in two of them, social capital accounted for all the benefits in productivity. In the third company, human capital did have an effect, but this effect was augmented to the degree to which a person also had strong social capital. The assumption that productivity is about smart people working hard on their own has been masking the fact that individual intelligence may only be optimized when it is enhanced through social connections to others in the group. Social connections are essentially the original internet, connecting different pockets of intelligence to make each pocket more than it would otherwise be by itself. These social connections turn out to be even more important for small companies and start – ups that specialize in innovation.

This is to say that as a single individual, no matter how skilful you may be, you can achieve only as much as you can but with other skilful individuals, with whom you are able to connect with, a lot more can be achieved. The word “TEAM” can therefore be taken or seen as an acronym for “Together Everyone Achieves More”.

Coming back to the illustration what we had seen previously in regard to what it means to live or be free in the context of living in society, if living with others socially is a human need, is there a way of living altruistically or if we live socially, why is it that we act selfishly?

Given our ability to mind read, we have the possibility of imagining or anticipating a person’s actions or reactions in advance which allows us to increase our exposure to social rewards and minimize the experience of social pain. If you can predict the email you are about to send to someone will lead that person to reject you, you can edit the email to get your point across more tactfully. In a negative way, we could use our ability to mind read, anticipate or analyse to manipulate others for our own selfish gains.

Behavioural economists use a game called ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ through which they have tried to understand what causes us to act selfishly or altruistically. In this game, two players have to decide whether to cooperate with each other or not. How much money the players earn depends on the combination of their decisions. Imagine there is ten dollars at stake for you and another player. If you both choose to cooperate, you each get five dollars and if you both choose not to cooperate, you each will get one dollar. The decision to cooperate is beneficial as both parties will be satisfied (50/50). However, if one of you chooses to cooperate and the other chooses not to, the non – cooperating defector gets the entire ten dollars and the one who cooperates gets nothing. In other words if you choose to cooperate, there’s a chance you’ll look like a chump as the other person takes all the money.

Assuming that you do not get to meet the other player, due to which you do not get to discuss your decision with the other player and will have no further interactions with that person after this game, what do you do? If you want to make more money and you assume the other person will cooperate, you should defect (because you’ll earn ten dollars instead of five dollars). If you assume the other person will defect, then you still defect (because you’ll earn one dollar instead of nothing). Regardless of what the other person does, you make more money by defecting. Nevertheless, multiple studies have shown that under those conditions, people still choose to cooperate more than a third of the time.

This would disperse the assertion made by philosophers such as David Hume and Thomas Hobbes who stated that the human person always acts out of self – interest. Yet, on further speculation, can an altruistic act be an act of selfishness in disguise? For example, consider the following quotes by Dalai Lama and Adam Smith,

“If you would like to be selfish, you should do it in a very intelligent way. The stupid way to be selfish is the way we have always worked, seeking happiness for ourselves alone d and in the process becoming more and more miserable. The intelligent way to be selfish is to work for the welfare of others.”

-          Dalai Lama

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own self – interest …. How selfish sovever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

-          Adam Smith

The above quote from Adam Smith, in other words, would seem to imply that in as much as they are helping us put food on our table, they are able to put food on their table by charging us. This therefore raises a question, “Is there a possibility of altruistic behaviour being really selfless?” The answer to it? Yes!

In Christian morality and Christian ethics, there is something known as ‘agape’, which is nothing but an unconditional love. It is a sacrificial love that wills the good of the other without expecting anything in return. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant would speak about ‘duty for duty’s sake’ which is quite similar to the Indian philosophical teaching of ‘nishkarma karma’ which speaks about not being attached to the fruit of the action. God’s love is unconditional. He loves and accepts us as we are although we don’t deserve it. Hence, He sent His only Son to pay the price for our salvation with the shedding of His precious blood. So while it is debatable whether a good deed is selfish or not indirectly would depend on the purpose and motivation behind one’s actions.

Selfishness, in the true sense of the word, is about being overtly concerned with one’s self. To some extent, self – respect is important. We need to look after ourselves. Besides, how can we help others if we ourselves are not fit enough to do so? Yet, to pamper one’s self or t put one’s self on a pedestal, despising others as inferiors, plotting, manipulating and cheating so as to achieve success or whatever it may be at the expense of others, that’s selfishness! On the contrary in an altruistic act, it is not so much about the pleasure of getting in doing a good act or deed but it is about seeing the other do well or being well. Here the good of the other takes precedence even if it is at the cost of one’s own self.

Matthew Liebermann in his book “Social” talks about his experience where he worked as a clerk on a surgical unit at St. Peter’s hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Over there, the nurses, day in and day out, do extraordinary work. Their work is very hard and not so rewarding – much like parenting can be. Each day, they deal with patients and family members who are at their worst. And unlike the rest of us, whose stomachs turn at the sight of bodily fluids and whose eyes roll up into our heads at the wounds that must be dressed, nurses rush in and do what needs to be done. They don’t do it because they love the patients or trust them. Often they barely even know their patients. They do it because they are motivated to help as an end in itself. They same goes for other public servants in society – the police, the soldiers, journalists and others, all who at times have to put their lives at risk for a greater good.

From a scientific and a psychological standpoint, in the human brain, there is something known as oxytocin which is responsible for the dopamine effect in the brain. The dopamine effect is nothing but the pleasure effect that is produced in the brain when one is doing an activity that one finds meaningful and purposeful (possibly even pleasurable). The oxytocin helps to promote altruistic tendencies not just towards one’s group but even to strangers as well. It is because of this that the magic happens when people come together to co – operate which leads to the development of many things such as building houses, schools and other institutions that support a society or also in the case of firefighters, nurses, soldiers, police officers and other public servants who risk their lives for the greater good of all.

While this sounds pretty nice at prima – facie the question that remains is, why is it that despite our disposition, we still seem to act self – centred. One reason is that we assume that the other is self – centred because of which we tend to become self – centred ourselves. As we seen in the example of the ‘Prisoners Dilemma’, if we adopt this kind of attitude, very little can be achieved. However, when we combine and co – operate, we achieve more.

Our ability to empathize and connect with others is also another unique feature to humankind. The word ‘empathy’ was introduced into the English language just over a century ago as a translation of the German word ‘einfhlung’ which means ‘feeling into’. The word ‘Einfhlung’ was used in the 19^th century aesthetic philosophy to describe our capacity to mentally get inside works of art and even nature itself, to have something like a first person’s experience from the object’s perspective. Empathy still means something like ‘feeling into’ but it almost always refers to our connecting with another person’s experience, rather than ‘getting inside’ an object.

The septal area of the human bring (which has also been found in other mammals) is responsible for reducing fear. One of the best measures of anxiety or fearfulness is called the startle response. If someone were to clap one’s hands loudly behind your head unexpectedly, there would be a cascade of neural, physiological and behavioural responses that would code this noise as a potential threat and prepare you to respond quickly – a classic fight or flight response. You would probably jump up, turn around and perhaps notice that your heart was racing. These responses are orchestrated by the amygdala, a phylogenetically ancient structure in the brain often associated with emotional responding. Rats whose septal area has been removed show other evidence of being more reactive to threats. This suggests that when the septal area is intact, it may function to dampen the distress we feel in response to threats.

Research suggests that the septal area is also critical for maternal caregiving, for instance, in rats, mice and rabbits, if the septal area is damaged, the animal will be a terrible parent. For such animals, whose septal area is damaged, they no longer make protective nests for their young, they provide their young with less milk and they experience a much higher rate of infant mortality.

What’s the relevance of all this? While humans start planning for their baby’s arrival months or even years in advance, most mammals probably do not have the same kind of logical understanding of their relationship with their new-born infants. In the absence of this knowledge in most mammals, screaming babies are a real dilemma. Should they rush up to help them or run away from them? Mammals are wired to fear noisy uncertain things but the septal area may help to quiet their fears and increase their motivation to help.

It is no accident that this description of the septal area parallels the oxytocin that is released when one experiences social rewards as seen previously. The septal area is rich in oxytocin receptors and for some mammals, this region has the highest density of oxytocin receptors in the brain. Intriguingly, this density is also affected by early parenting experiences for instance among rodents, pups who receive more parental care grew up to have higher oxytocin receptor density in the septal area, whereas pups who are separated from the mothers grow up to have lower oxytocin receptor density in the septal area. The septal region therefore appears to be the key node that converts our effective response into the motivation to provide help, enabling us to selflessly put ourselves in the line of fire whenever the situation calls for it.

I suppose by now you may have been baffled with all the technicality of how the human brain works whenever we experience an emotion but the point is that empathy is arguably the pinnacle of our cognitive achievements – the peak of the social brain. It requires us to understand the inner emotional worlds of others and then act in ways that not only benefits them but also improves our relationships with them. It can motivate us to alleviate another’s pain or to celebrate someone else’s good fortune. All of the neural mechanisms that we have seen so far need to be co – ordinated in order to make this amazing achievement possible. When all these mechanisms are in place, we can be our best selves.

What about those who suffer from autism? Autism is a very complex phenomenon and due to its complexity, it is not something that can be put into a pigeonhole. Yet, one common underlying trait among people who suffer from autism is that they are not able to see, feel or understand emotions as compared to non – autistic individuals. People who suffer from autism see the world in shapes, sizes or figures without understanding what goes behind it. This can be detrimental because it inhibits such people to socialize or empathize. Yet, the situation does not look absolutely bleak as there may be a light down a dark tunnel. This is to say that while autistic individuals may come across as anti – social or unrelatable, we could say that it is their way of coping with the most intense and unpredictable part of the world (people) which overwhelms them literally in each encounter. This may sound counterintuitive and it is for the sheer fact that what looks from the outside like insensitivity to the social world is very different from how the autistic individual experiences the world. Whether this is good or bad is debatable but in my humble opinion, if we can not only learn to accept and respect each other’s difference but also help each other move in the right direction, that’s something magical.

Some people think or say that money is the root of all evil; it is not! Human greed and avarice is, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There’s enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”. It seems as though a large portion of the world’s wealth is controlled by 20% of its population while the remaining 80% (the poor, the middle class and if I may add, the upper middle class) are like the donkey chasing behind the carrot. Money is not an end in itself but it is a means to an end. It is a medium of transaction and the more one has of it, the more options one has. Being around with the people you know, you love (and who love you in return) would probably matter more than how much you earn. The good news is that building ‘social’ into our lives or becoming ‘social’ is very cost – effective. This includes things like getting coffee with a friend, talking to a neighbour or volunteering all of which would not make your wallet light and could significantly improve your life. The bad news is that as a society (and even at a global level), we’re blowing it. Over the last half – century, there has been a steady decline in nearly all things social apart from social media. People are significantly less likely to be married today than they were fifty years ago. We volunteer less, participate in fewer social groups and entertain people in our homes less often than we used to.

In as much as pain and pleasure are part of our lives, the need to love and be loved and to relate and be in community is what makes us who we are. No matter how smart or rational we become, we can’t overthink our basic needs. We all need people to love and respect and we all need people who love and respect us. Would life without them be worth it? Does the ability to play chess and solve calculus problems make for a life without other people? Mother Theresa, who observed people in the most squalid living conditions imaginable, believed that a life without other people ‘is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience’. These basic social needs are present at birth to ensure our survival but we are guided by these needs until the end of our days. We do not always recognize these needs and we may not see them influencing those around us but they are still there, nonetheless.

Our basic urges include the need to belong, right along with the need for food and water. Our pain and pleasure systems do not merely respond to sensory inputs that can produce physical harm and reward. They are also exquisitely tuned to the sweet and bitter tastes delivered from the social world – a world of connection and threat to connection. For instance, a condescending look from a complete stranger can feel like a dagger, just as a kind look can reassure us that we are safe in a new environment. If we learn to become more aware of these little subtleties and how they impact our social world (and us eventually at a personal level), we will be in a better position to cultivate and nurture deeper relationships and not superficial ones.

This may have been perhaps one of my longest blogposts/articles I have written ( if not for the longest one) and in as much as I would have liked to put it as briefly as possible, human life is too complex to put it in a nutshell and if I were to do so, I would probably not be doing justice to it. Perhaps there may be a lot more that we can explore and try to understand and perhaps what I have written may be just a tip of the iceberg. I’m no social scientist or psychologist and yet the process of writing this blogpost/article has indeed been a learning experience for me, of understanding the dynamics of human relationships. If you’ve managed to reach this far, I do hope you have been able to draw some value from it in as much as I have. As we continue to battle against this pandemic, may we never take our families, our friends, our near and dear ones or any person for that matter for granted, for to reiterate the words of Confucius, “Under the heavens, under the sky, there is but one family”. God love you. Stay blessed.