I would like to throw out some questions to inquire about ourselves that would lead to the topic. How do you see other people – as an object available to be used anytime or as another self like you and me? How do you treat him or her – as an enemy that ready to devour your comfort zone so that respect on you may be out of the way or as a person that lets you to take the risk of invading your being a person?
This topic is relevant in enhancing one’s relational skill. Everybody needs to be connected in a positive way to yield a good relationship – in the family, friendship and other identified groups of people.
Our times is being bombarded with negative thoughts, prevailed to put up barriers so as others may not have the chance to interact with each others as fellow human beings as another image of God. Or maybe a pre-conceived ideas and experiences that hinders us from having an authentic relationship with others, and that is tantamount to commit a wrong attitude of being biased and prejudiced. What would be the alternative to the problem of relationship so as to create a healthy, humane and value-oriented environment?
It’s the perspective of phenomenology. By this it allows other person to be as he is and to grow without being ‘boxed in’ in the first place. Through it there is no place for bias, prejudice or pre-conditioned generalization to protect our comfort zones or personality but a place for fraternal correction for one’s growth without sarcastic remark, professionalism, respect and appreciation for the giftedness of that person. This is especially true for all followers of the Master and Teacher, and even He himself welcomed, entertained and mingled with prostitutes, tax collectors, zealots and criminals to realize the plan of his Father
We our not in total control of all the events in our daily lives, for there is many worlds that exists aside from our own world. As Maurice Mearleau-Ponty, a French existentialist philosopher said that the world is not what I think, but what I live through. Another injunction would suffice his thinking the 'sane' man is not the one who has eliminated all contradictions from himself so much as the one who uses these contradictions and involves them in his work.
My final remark to this is coming from a text message sent by one of my friends. It goes this way: our feelings come from our thoughts. Then what is the conclusion? We can control our feelings by learning to change one thing: the way we think.
