What comprises our “self”? If we were to think about this unselfconsciously — as if no one were watching, what would we include? How we choose to make and keep friends? How we remember our life? What words trigger a change in our mood? What we think of when buying clothes?
There are many, many small and large things which make up our person. We know a lot of it, and we are learning a lot more: We are the best at being ourselves, and we are also always working towards becoming a better version of ourselves.
Like us, others lead just as deep and full lives as ourselves, and it is only in moments when our lives intersect that we feel the fullness of the lives of other people. That they are the main character of their lives, and have their own TV show going on. To see other people — truly see them in their full complexity, is supposedly encapsulated in a neologism called “[sonder](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#:~:text=son‧der-,Noun,lack of awareness of it.)”.
Making sense and meaning of the world is an effort everyone takes daily. And there is a special way in which each of us does it. This interpretive toolkit created by us shapes our personal world, and no form of control can take this away from us.
Let’s work on understanding ourselves better, and remember to celebrate the specialness in every person. This way, we can draw our own boundaries and understand the distance at which we can love ourselves as well as other people simultaneously.
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Some of the stories below are our conversations with people which we have documented after their consent. Some others are the books we have read.
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