Hello Mr/Ms Harp!

Are you a refugee who sticks to your clan because you feel at ease with those who know what you’ve been through?
And you think that the rest of the world would never understand it anyway?
You believe “they” wouldn’t even understand your jokes, let alone your dreams and fears?

Of course, your fellows in war, or whatever, will understand you better but is that all there really is to  friendship? Don’t you think you’re missing a lot if you just stick with one group of people gathered around the same idea or need? Aren’t you as an individual made up of a little more than only one experience no matter how much it influenced you?

Or you may be one of those people who instead of sticking their nose into other people’s business and life prefer to think about who they are and what they are here for?

Well, that is a good start, I would say, a precondition for any self-improvement! However, sitting alone in your room, mulling over things and pondering might not yield many answers to your questions. Are you even aware of what you like and don’t like? How can you know whether you like mango if you have never tried one? How can you explore yourself if there is no one you can relate to? The physicists would put it like this:

Imagine yourself alone in the midst of nothingness and then try to tell me how large you are. (Eddington, A. S. The Nature of the Physical World).

People often forget that through meeting other people not only do you discover what connects you but also what differs you. How else would you know what makes you distinct and one of a kind? And how far do you expect to get in this self-exploration process if you restrict yourself to hanging out with people with whom you only have certain things in common? And if this always happens to be the same group of people?

Just as you can recognise that you were (un)fortunate to get your nose from your father or flat feet from your mother so you can recognise little pieces of yourself in your friends. The more different these pieces are, the more puzzles you’ve put together. The only downside may be birthdays and other social gatherings when all these people you have something in common with are, well, seated next to one another only to discover that they are mutually not very compatible.

However, as birthdays are once a year, I think the idea should not be altogether rejected. It came clear to me after reading a book by Anthony Storr on the Integrity of the Personality. After describing the process of how a young soul gradually acquires its form within a family, he continues to follow its lifelong development and emphasises the role other people also play in modelling it. I think the following passage sums it all up nicely:

Personality is like a harp with many strings. Not all the strings are plucked at once and some may lie silent throughout life. Others may be set into vibration by the impact of personalities with the same frequency.  

The beauty and the complexity of the melody you will produce is therefore not just up to you but rather up to you in relation to other people. Each and every person that has entered our lives and stayed there at least for a little while has struck a chord or two, added a few tones, minor or major, some already familiar and some never heard before.