Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Do you feel the connection between you and everything around you – people, animals (dogs, cats, chickens, ducks…), trees, flowers, birds, sky, clouds, rivers, seas…?

Everything around you constitutes your world – the small world you have, within other larger worlds, such as your city, your country, your global world.

If you have good connection with your world, you would have a sense of belonging – this is my world, my home. Without that good connection, you would feel lonely and lost – millions of acquaintances, how many intimates? When I leave this world, how many bid farewell? (Triệu người quen có mấy người thân, khi lìa trần có mấy người đưa – Vũ Thành An).

The feeling of loneliness and lostness is called “alienation” and was mentioned a lot during the 20th century by existentialist philosophers, who espoused a negative worldview of lonely and lost individuals without any sense of belonging, any direction on living, and any meaning to life. Such feeling of alienation was real for many people in cities across the industrial world, where workers on factory’s production lines worked like robots working on a very small job, such as tightening one nut on a bold on a car frame all day, without any sense of labor achievement. They had no land and no relatives around to give them any sense of belonging, as farmers in the countryside might enjoy. And they lost faith in God because 20th century was the high tide of atheism.

That was a tragedy for many human souls and for the world at the time.

If you don’t have good connection to your world, you will have that feeling of alienation with its full depressing package.

That means, to be happy you need to have a sense of connection to your small world around you – by loving and caring. Love people and everything around you, pay attention to them and care about them. Keep people around you happy when seeing you, keep the streets clean when you walk by, and enjoy the animals, the birds, the trees, the flowers… Your love and care build the connection between you and your world.

That connection gives you happiness, sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose. Good for your mind, your heart and your soul.

Wish you all be connected to your world.

With compassion,

Hoành

© copyright 2024
Trần Đình Hoành
Permitted for non-commercial use
www.dotchuoinon.com