Peter Drucker: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. The measure of a man is what he does with power. If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
Author Chimamanda Adichie: “In Nigeria, I had often thought about who I was—writer, dreamer, thinker— but only in America did I consider what I was. I became Black in America.“
Christian African philosopher, J. S. Mbiti: “I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am”
The second commandment: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.“
Each of these statements illustrates a different aspect of a similar theme. Although we see ourselves as individuals who exist separately from other people, it is in our relationships with others that our existence takes shape and acquires meaning. I can have all sorts of aspirations, I can take all sorts of actions, I can have all sorts of feelings, and I can build an entire inner world of feelings, dreams, and imaginations, but without an external world full of other people, that world would be limited to a point where it would be hard to argue that my experience is human.
When we are born into the world, we quickly begin to assert our own existence. We cry, we move, we quickly move onto trying to move other things. Eventually, we begin to notice that some of those other things are people. This is when things become interesting. We continue to grow we develop an understanding of ourselves as independent actors, but all of our actions are in some way influenced, informed and shaped by our experiences with other people or something built by other people.
Anyone raised in the Christian tradition will be familiar with some variation of this phrase “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is one of the two commandments that are central to the New Testament. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment of this commandment, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to figure out how to put it into practice in the context of a real life with other people.
Some interpret the commandment as a call for us to sacrifice ourselves for others in the way that Jesus is said to have sacrificed himself for us. Whether that was the intention of those around me or not, that was how I interpreted the commandment for much of my childhood.
At a certain age, though, I began to interpret this sentence differently. I started to see it as a call for us to:
- love ourselves, AND
- love others in the same way that we love ourselves.
This still left me wondering about the “how” of this love thing. How does one know that one loves oneself? Without knowing if one loves oneself, how would one know if one really loves others?
Setting aside the word love for a moment, we are left with the terms “thy neighbor” and “as thyself.” This parallelism asks us to see ourselves and others as in some sense equivalent, but not identical.
I suspect many of us struggle with understanding with both sides of this equation. Then again, if it were easy, I suppose there would have been no need for a great teacher to issue the challe
Peter Drucker: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. The measure of a man is what he does with power. If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
Author Chimamanda Adichie: “In Nigeria, I had often thought about who I was—writer, dreamer, thinker— but only in America did I consider what I was. I became Black in America.”
Christian African philosopher, J. S. Mbiti: “I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am”
The second commandment: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Each of these quotes illustrates a different aspect of a similar theme. Although we see ourselves as individuals who exist separately from other people, it is in our relationships with others that our existence takes shape and acquires meaning. I can have all sorts of aspirations, I can take all sorts of actions, I can have all sorts of feelings, and I can build an entire inner world of feelings, dreams, and imaginations, but without an external world full of other people, that world would be limited to a point where it would be hard to argue that my experience is human.
When we are born into the world, we quickly begin to assert our own existence. We cry, we move, we quickly move onto trying to move other things. Eventually, we begin to notice that some of those other things are people. This is when things become interesting. We continue to grow we develop an understanding of ourselves as independent actors, but all of our actions are in some way influenced, informed and shaped by our experiences with other people or something built by other people.
Anyone raised in the Christian tradition will be familiar with some variation of this phrase “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is one of the two commandments that are central to the New Testament. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment of this commandment, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to figure out how to put it into practice in the context of a real life with other people.
Some interpret the commandment as a call for us to sacrifice ourselves for others in the way that Jesus is said to have sacrificed himself for us. Whether that was the intention of those around me or not, that was how I interpreted the commandment for much of my childhood.
At a certain age, though, I began to interpret this sentence differently. I started to see it as a call for us to:
- love ourselves, AND
- love others in the same way that we love ourselves.
This still left me wondering about the “how” of this love thing. How does one know that one loves oneself? Without knowing if one loves oneself, how would one know if one really loves others?
Setting aside the word love for a moment, we are left with the terms “thy neighbor” and “as thyself.” This parallelism asks us to see ourselves and others as in some sense equivalent, but not identical.
I suspect that most of us at least sometimes find both sides of this equation challenging.
Then again, if it were easy to love yourself AND love others, I suppose there would have been no need to make “Love thy neighbor as thyself” half of the foundation of a 2000 year-old religious tradition…
—
Because I am there for myself I can be more for you. By being there for you I find/create more of myself.
—
Explore・Define・Iterate・Transform
Context ・ Intention ・ Action ・ Outcome
—
Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)
In the space between you and me awaits all that will ever be.
人と人の間に全てのもと
© Dana Cogan, 2026, all rights reserved.